Glass
by sekai no yakusoku
Summary: Do not go into the wood. It is enchanted and should you enter beyond the border, you may come out of it enchanted too. In fact, you may not come out at all. [RaexRob]
1. I : Beauty

So this is very different so far from **Winner Takes All** or **For Nothing, For Everything...For the Birds**. Very. So I warn, it's very less driven by dialogue and more by narration, and so on, but there is a story and while maybe not entirely apparent, this is the beginning of that 'beauty and the beast' thing, but in my own way, which brings it so far removed from the original that maybe I shouldn't say so at all. Ha. Anyway, let me know if you think I should continue. I'm quite uncertain with this one, because it's new territory for me, but this lays out the beginnings, so like I said, please let me know.

In short, review if you have time. For this story, it is especially appreciated and helpful since I know not if I should even build upon it.

Teen titans is so not mine. Balderdash.

And for those of you who don't know, 'Garth' is Aqualad. Yeah, the name could be better but hey, it's what it is in the comics, so Garth it is. I like Aqualad anyway though...heh.

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**Glass**

**Chapter One: Beauty**

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"No, not here either," she muttered to herself and threw another book over her shoulder. It landed with an insulted thump on the haphazard pile of all the other rejects and stirred some rueful dust bunnies back to life. The muttering continued and so did the growth of the literary mountain as Raven sorted through her many, many tomes—too many now, she thought. An exasperated sigh and about 207 books later, she sat in the center of her now disassembled library. Where was that thing anyway? 

"Hey, what are you doing up there?" a voice called from below.

"Looking for a book," she called down through the hatch in the floor and jumped back when the source of the voice—a boy her age probably, with blackish eyes—appeared in front of her, standing on the middle rung of the ladder. He laughed at her and she scowled. "Yeah, yeah," she glowered.

"Sorry Beauty," he grinned and she rolled her eyes. Sure he was.

"You're about as sorry as they come," she teased and now it was his turn to scowl, offended.

"Tcha, anyway, Star wanted me to tell you supper's almost ready," he said.

"Thanks for the bulletin," Raven smiled and then all but shoved him down the ladder and closed the hatch.

"HEY! You could've killed me!" Her brother-in-law to be said sourly through the hatch's door and Raven gave a short and derisive laugh.

"Yeah right, you always land on your feet," she called through the wood and listened, amused as Garth shuffled away.

"What happened to you?" a voice chuckled that Raven recognized as her oldest sister Terra's.

"Beauty," Garth mumbled irritably and Terra laughed.

Raven sighed. Someday she'd rid herself of the ridiculous nickname and stuffed the memory far down in the recesses of her mind. She sighed again.

Beyond the absurdity of her nickname, their house was an odd one of its own kind of oddness, well not all that odd perhaps, but odd enough. When she was born, youngest of three, Raven's mother died almost directly after the birth. Tragedy pursued the young three as only six years later their father died as well. With no way to stay in the city where they had been born, the eldest of the three—Terra, a fiery blonde of fourteen at the time—decided they must move to the country. Certainly they were young, but it was their only option. There it was a more humble living than they were used to, but also something they might be able to get on with; none of them had any skills to speak of that would be appreciated in the city. So it was that Raven lived with her sisters in a small cottage outside the village of Green Hill—the northerner's were never long on imagination—and that was where she grew up.

It was probably easier for her because that was where she started; her sisters Terra and Starfire had a harder time of it, being accustomed to the softness of southern living with at least a couple servants and always clean sheets. On top of that, there was the fact that they were both achingly young and had Raven to take care of. Still, Terra was stubborn and more than a little outspoken and Starfire was generously patient. So they managed pretty well too.

For whatever reason, the raising that the two older sisters did of her was minimal. They told her it was because she was a 'precocious' child, which Raven now properly discerned to mean solitary and bookish, but that was alright with her. She did very much love her books.

Terra was slight in frame, but very beautiful and the village took to her immediately on their arrival. Starfire was equally well received and the toddler in her arms—Raven at the time—was permissibly cooed at and awed at. Had Raven been able to voice her opinions of such actions, it is safe to say that the welcome the girls received would have been much less inviting. But babies weren't known for their speech abilities—even a precocious one—and Raven did not cry much as a baby, so the cooing and awing continued. When they first arrived with Raven, Terra was fourteen and Starfire was thirteen.

In the coming years both her older sisters blossomed into fantastically gorgeous ladies and had eligible suitors from town lined up—and a lot that weren't too, but couldn't help themselves. This was when Raven was probably around twelve or so. By the time the literati was sixteen it became evident that she was going to disappoint the village boys by being comparatively plain—not ugly, but plain was plain and there was no getting around that when your sisters were nearly worshipped goddesses on earth.

So how did a 'plain' girl get the nickname of Beauty? Raven wondered herself sometimes at the uncanny way it stuck to her after that one fatal night when at a town gathering they had been throwing nicknames around in a sort of haphazard circle. When it had come to her she had been, as usual, disinterested and somewhat scrupulously annoyed, so she had said with all her cynicism and sarcasm: Beauty of course.

Well, that was, if nothing else, a mistake. For the name clung to her like clothes to skin, saturated by the rains in spring and she could not pick it off of her no matter how many times she told people her name was Raven.

And it was not a cruel continued use of the name, but to her it reminded her of what she was not and so she could not hear the kindness or jovial tones her nickname was used in. She heard only something that was as inappropriate as calling either of her other sisters ugly, and stayed well away from reflective surfaces with a more fervent purpose than ever before.

A verbal reminder of what she wasn't was enough without a visual one.

That was when she was sixteen, two years ago.

Now Raven herself was going on eighteen—still plain—and well-known to be even more outspoken than Terra; Starfire was twenty-five and Terra was twenty-six. Starfire was informally engaged to the young man named Garth, the town's woodsman. He cut a strapping figure with toned muscles from working in the woodlands and helping out at the forge or the stables and had an uncanny sense of knowing what people thought before they said it. To his credit—in Raven's opinion—he had not flocked to either of her sisters like so many of the young men had done; no, he had let Starfire come to him.

The pretty redhead had seen him often with Raven—who spent a lot of time at the forge because her surrogate older brother, Victor Stone, was the primary blacksmith, and spent equable time at the stables because she liked horses; the stableman's name was Garfield Logan and teased her about how much more time she spent with horses rather than people. It was a fact, if a fact known only by Garth himself, and maybe the blacksmith, that he made a point to be around when Raven was near; she intrigued him.

"Bah, she'd never have me," he bemoaned one night to Stone who shrugged.

"You never know," he said, pulling a long face at the sorry state of some of his tools and began to rearrange them properly. Garth scowled darkly and gave a short laugh.

"She's too much a handful that one for me, maybe. And I am not enough of one for her," he mused. Stone shot him a look.

"Sounds more like the eldest to me." At the smith's words, Garth shook his head vehemently.

"No, Beauty...Raven...she's got you know, a stiff sense of this world, likes her own better," the woodsman said from his own inferences and Stone chuckled.

"You read people well; I only know that because she's silently let me become like an older brother," Stone told him and then quizzically added, "Anyway isn't the middle sister interested in you?" At this, Garth nodded absently.

"Yes, I suppose. And she is very kind and beautiful. She must come to me though, for I do not know what motive I might have if I went now on my own," he said slowly and Stone grunted understanding as he shifted more metal workings. It was not wise to entangle one's self with a sister if one had questionable feelings for another without solid rejection; it made for gossip and then reality of the gossip and Garth was too smart to fall into such things. Still, he was human and his next musing said as much. "I do wonder though," Garth continued after a while but nothing more was said beyond that and so his secret feelings for Raven remained something he kept otherwise to himself.

And sure enough, eventually Starfire came to him.

After a few weeks of watching him with some apprehension and a lot of admiration, Starfire chalked up the courage to ask Garth for a dance at one of the town's solstice celebrations. That was a few months ago in summer and it had been a very bold thing to do.

After all, a lady did not ask a man to dance anymore than she might ask him to please meet her in a shadowed alleyway after midnight. Garth was a progressive sort in the midst of these people though and graciously accepted and Starfire's allure was such that he found himself loving her as much as he loved her younger sister and knew that that must be enough. Sometimes there was no defining line and he knew that, but it wa a quiet lack of a linen and so he and Starfire continued to grow together.

That aside, Starfire's 'boldness' was nothing compared to Terra's who might have had an equally promising—if not more so—suitor if not for her insanely shrewish streak. The town made light of it, because they liked her for all her fieriness, but it was simply not usual for a girl to be so...outspoken. Still, Terra was very quick-witted and she made people laugh and was good with her hands—cooking, sewing, anything of that nature—and soon she was the unofficial seamstress of Green Hill. Raven, however, remained a generally accepted and somewhat ignored member of the town after it became apparent that when she was spoken to, she did not take too kindly to it and often had some cold rejoinder to shut the poor soul up who did dare and try.

On occasion Garfield might have a conversation with her, which meant more that he made fun of her solitary nature and it was a harmless sort of teasing, but it did not escape Raven's knowledge that the source of his kidding around stemmed from the whole of what the town thought of her. His teasing did not stop her from coming though. Raven liked horses a lot and grew fond of a beautiful one of gold and butter coloring. It was a magnificent creature and it having no name, she gave it one: Arella, after her mother. Of course, it is not so flattering a thing to name a horse after one's deceased mother usually, but this was an indisputably beautiful animal and so the gasps of the appalled soon died down to nothing, especially when they saw Raven riding. She was rather good at it.

And when she wasn't riding 'her' horse or reading books, she was often at the forge. Victor Stone took a liking to her and even let her help him in the forge sometimes and while she was not so strong or skilled with anvil and hammer as he was, she did learn to do more delicate forge things, like glass-blowing. She was rather covetous of her creations too, fascinated with their fragility and Raven had many glass pieces in her attic room, set along the sill of the window and they cast fractured prisms against everything within a two-foot radius. And books, she had lots and lots of books. One day during a short visit to deliver some horseshoes, Victor got to see her growing collection and remarked that it suited her, and ruffled her hair genially. This, she allowed. He was one of the people she did get along with other than her sisters.

"Beauty, supper!"

"Coming!" She threw open the hatch and veritably slipped through the opening. Terra threw her an older sister's grin and whistled at the landing; Raven was very light on her feet. Starfire on the other hand, clucked her tongue worriedly.

"I wish you wouldn't do that. You might hurt yourself," she said and Raven shrugged.

"Probably I won't though," she replied and Starfire sighed.

"Probably you won't," she agreed reluctantly; she knew as well as anyone that her younger sister was very agile. Still, she was only human, and Starfire couldn't help but be concerned about what-ifs.

"Beauty," Garth smiled kindly at her and pulled out her chair for her; surprised a little, Raven nodded dumbly and sat. He pushed her in. He did the same for the other two with equal consideration of course and soon they were eating, talking about anything there was to talk about.

"There is talk of Mischief again," Garth said after supper as Starfire and Terra cleaned the dishes and Raven sat on one of the lower rungs of the ladder that led to the attic and thusly, her room.

"Mischief?" Raven raised a brow. He nodded.

"So I want you girls to be aware now, more than before," he warned and this was the first time any of them had seen the bright lad's eyes shadow with some inexplicable anxiousness.

"But Garth, it's all stories, isn't it?" Starfire asked tentatively.

"Of course it is, codswallop," Terra affirmed, showing a skeptical face, and though Starfire would never get used to her older sister's sometimes rough use of language, she was heartened by the insistence in it. It should be noted that Starfire's idea of rough language was sorely more sensitive than most.

"I don't think it is," Raven said slowly and her sisters eyed her strangely.

"Don't be silly," Terra dismissed.

"Yes, don't, please," Starfire agreed more politely.

"Raven is right," Garth said and the older sisters threw him incredulous looks as he used her real name and agreed with her. "They are not just stories as you call them. Things...happen in the country, especially around here. And this mischief is strange to us, but we who've grown up on these stories take to believing in them. I need you to believe in them too and when you believe me, I will tell you that it is best to stay out of the forest." This was the most Garth had ever spoken to them collectively and it got their attention right away.

"But Garth, you, you're a woodsman, surely you know there's nothing out there," Starfire almost pleaded with him to confirm what she said, but he did not and she wrung her hands in her apron. Terra said nothing but blew hair out of her face, irritated by what she could not understand but, it seemed, must believe anyway.

"Mostly we should be fine," he assured them once he knew they believed him—Raven more so, but she was always more given to being open to such things; he suspected it came of reading so much—and smiled disarmingly. Starfire nodded, soothed by this statement and Terra waved a hand that said she didn't care either way much but that was fine. Raven said and indicated nothing at this near-promise of safety but excused herself to her room, saying she still had to find that book from before. Feet disappearing into the attic as she stepped off the top rung of the ladder, she didn't notice or feel Garth's piercing gaze follow her until she closed the hatch.

There was a knock on her door (or hatch) not long after.

"Yes? Come in." He threw open the hatch and Raven arched a brow as he clambered through.

"Garth," she nodded cordially, inviting him without further ado into the whole of her sanctuary.

"You were listening tonight, right?" he asked and she thought him uncharacteristically concerned. She nodded to say yes. "Well, good. Pay heed, alright Beauty?" he smiled and began to go back down. Now Raven climbed off her small bed—some books went sprawling—and hurried to him.

"Stop worrying about me, you," she said with a gentleness that was a well kept secret of hers and maybe it was that that gave Garth the madness or courage to do something so simple and meaningful as take her hand in his and squeeze it and then bring her down to kiss her cheek—as a cousin might—and he could not be faulted. For Garth was a good man, true and honorable to a fault. His love for Starfire was genuine—as was his love for Raven—and he had made his choice, long since recognizing that if Raven ever did open her eyes to a man, it would not be him. Such was his wisdom and such was his strange fate to be near her always, now engaged to Star, but he did not mind

When you loved someone, it had to be something you did not mind or you might grow to hate them for something that wasn't their fault at all, and he could never allow himself to hate Beauty...to hate Raven.

He paused on the ladder, considering.

"I do worry," he conceded at last, and disappeared from the hatch's opening altogether, leaving Raven eyeing him in question, standing at the top of the ladder.

Hours later the moonlight fell through her single window in crosshatches of silver white and made her glass figures burst with radiance, and it seemed to fill the small attic. Her room was still a mess, books strewn all about, but the beauty in the glass things outshone the mess, shadowed in the night anyway and Raven did not look for that book from before. Instead she sat on her bed and stared out her window at the forest below; she had a good view of it. There was a stream that trickled in the green and edged out of the forest just enough to provide water for their house—for cooking or cleaning or whatever. She wondered at Garth's statement from earlier and found herself longing to disobey and find the mischief instead of hide from it.

Mischief was another word for magic, but that Magic should exist was preposterous and so it was called 'mischief'.

Magic, was it really the same though? She had her doubts and continued to wonder long into the night, for such was her tendency: to fancy and think more than the average person might, more than the average person would want to and when her sisters were asleep she still tossed in her bed, awake. Starfire slept in the room with Garth downstairs and Terra had her own room near the kitchen. And finally, sleep completely elusive, Raven threw her sheets off and opened the hatch in her floor as quietly as possible. It was not a completely silent action, but it was mostly and she stepped very, very lightly down the ladder.

She glanced around. No one was there and she bit her tongue, not trusting her sigh to not wake the others. Hand closing over the door knob, Raven exited the house and shut the door as softly as she might, which was also very.

The night air chilled her and she rubbed her arms up and down to keep the circulation fresh. Autumn was being short with them this year and it looked to be an early and unkindly long winter. It was the degree that let your breath hang like morning mist in the dark air and Raven could swear she saw images in it, but brushed it off. Surely that was a silly thought, even for her. Their house was precariously near to the woodland and she approached it like it was a wild animal—it was not far from it. Untamed, she clung to the stream's edge and paused on the invisible border only a second before she placed one cautious foot into the beginnings of the forest.

And nothing happened. She scowled and let out the breath she didn't know she'd been holding; she'd at least expected something...a hare maybe, or a deer? Some sign of life even if it was not Mischief or magic—synonymous really—was what she had thought would make itself known to her, but none did and emboldened, she stepped all the way into the woods.

Her steps were as light as she could make them and she only had one really bad moment when she stepped on a particularly dead branch. The crackling sound it made seemed to echo mysteriously throughout the forest and she feared it would reach its crackling waves all the way to the house and wake Garth. He would be furious. Not that there was much reason to be furious, she thought blandly. Though she could tell it was greener than any other place in or near Green Hill, and that perhaps the stream's sparkle was a little more alive here than back across near her house, well, these were all things she could dismiss for one reason or the other.

That was until she saw them.

It was only a glint at first, a hard and beautiful glint, but it caught her eye and she followed it like a shipmaster charting a distant star. For some reason it seemed to move, and not with her, and soon she found herself growing angry. Why wouldn't it hold still? It occurred to her that she was very chilly but just as soon as that thought came to her it also occurred to her that the moving light was teasing her and her resolve to track it increased.

Ten or twenty more minutes of painstaking follow-the-leader later, it seemed to hold its place and not daring to let out a sigh of relief, the youngest of three approached what looked like a large and netted mass of vines. It hung like a great wall of green between some of the taller trees and, gently she tried to move some of it to one side for a better look, shivering as an unexpected breeze rippled through the night. But Raven forgot her cold as she pushed back some foliage and let out a soft gasp.

They were beautiful. They were perfect. They were roses.

And they were all made of glass.

Entranced, she thought perhaps there was some Mischief in here after all, but she frowned slightly at that very thought. Such loveliness could not be Mischief.

And that was how Raven decided there actually was a difference between that and Magic after all.

So thinking, she tried to further part the greenery blocking her from the garden of glass and was surprised—and more than a bit alarmed—as the green seemed to move away for her, like water parting in a ship's wake...only backwards of course. Her curiosity staved off fear though—something she would never admit to having anyway—and she stepped toward the fragile roses. They were all immaculate in every way, the refined edges of each petal imitating grace, and the rivulets of crystal refraction surpassing the radiance of sun and the glimmer of stars all at once. And here Raven thought she could no more leave this place of delicate and even literary beauty any more than she could breathe water.

Venturing deeper into the midst of shining glass, the thorns looking like ice, she found herself in the center of it all and facing the loveliest rose of all. It should have been harder to say it was the loveliest, should have been far more difficult to set it apart, but dark eyes scrutinizing, Raven found it was only indisputable. Somehow this one managed to be a little more generously made, not in size either, for it was not the largest of the flora, but more in the care it seemed to have required. She swore she could actually see the slight veins of a real rose in the transparent petals of this glass one, could see the lines in the tiniest of its thorns and maybe even catch sight of its roots, deep down in the forest ground.

It must be real, she thought wistfully and almost unconsciously, she reached out her right hand to brush it gently, not hold it or break it, just touch it to know it was really there.

There was a flash of light, she thought and then cawing.

Ravens?

She shielded her eyes and opened them again all in one instant.

Wings were everywhere as ravens poured out of nowhere and engulfed her. Light shone...was it behind them? No, she realized with confusion and understanding in one, the light was shining from inside of them, their wings throwing the light from each blacker than black feather. She tried to see through them entirely and pushed against them.

"Let me through!" she cried and the wings were gone.

That was too easy, was her first thought and her heartbeat pulsed faster as the sound of flapping wings returned...but this was somehow lighter. She turned and was startled to see a small robin on the forest floor. It looked...lost amidst the great glass roses and she empathized with it somewhat. The roses were beautiful but suddenly her desire to be near them was gone, replaced with an estranged cold that left her feeling very empty and wandering.

"Here, I'm lost too," she said and she did not smile as Starfire or even Terra might have but the little bird must have seen something in her face that was trustworthy; it hopped toward her and Raven's eyes widened as its little feet made prints in...snow.

It was everywhere, and she guessed that was what the blinding white light had been. Snow.

But that couldn't be right. It was only mid autumn.

This is an enchanted wood, her mind reminded her and she yielded as she swept her fingers through the cold, white crystals of ice. It was very soft, she mused, for something made of such hardness as tiny pellets of ice, and she scooped some up in her hands and stared at it for a moment before the robin decided to hop up on the small mound.

"There, you've a little platform," and now she smiled at it softly. "I wonder where we are," she said to the robin and it tilted its head at her as though it considered her statement. A sudden gust whirled around her and she drew the bird to her to shield it even as she began to tremble from the arctic winds. "Too cold for autumn," she remarked with chattering teeth and rose from her kneeling position. She should go home, she realized and made to leave the eerie and beautiful glass figures behind, but there was a whooshing noise and the fall of a shadow that was not her own and Raven found she could not get the green curtain to budge. It seemed she was trapped.

"You cannot go," a voice said.

"And why is that?" she asked bravely—or recklessly, whichever. There was the crunch of the snow behind her that she accurately took to be footsteps—boots by the sound of it.

"You said you were lost," the voice said. Raven frowned but still did not turn to face the speaker.

"I am not," she replied and there was an empty chuckle to answer her. Her next shiver was not from the chilled air.

"Then I am sorry, for I fear your words have trapped you here. You are as lost as I am," the voice said and did sound truly apologetic, if equally numb with it. Then there was a low whistle and the robin in her hands fluttered away from her and over her shoulder, and now Raven turned.

She supposed it was silly of her to expect him to be ugly, but she had hoped. An ugly man she would not have feared as she feared this man. For he was beautiful, terrifyingly beautiful with eyes that glinted the same as his glass roses—somehow she knew they must be his now, just by looking at him—and ebony hair that fell unkempt over his eyes in jags.

"Am I enchanted then?" she asked, vaguely aware of how distant she felt from everything suddenly and how the world seemed to heave under her; she thought she lost her balance and she thought arms caught her gently, but she could not be certain.

"No," the stranger said and then added, "You are simply lost." Raven had a brief awareness of rolling her eyes at this before they closed to see nothing but whiteness, snow whiteness, all sparkling with the same curving light as a glass rose. "But I can allow you to leave for three days. Tell your family you will be safe and then, on the third day, come to this place," the voice said to her closed eyes. She shook her head slightly to show she heard him but did not want to obey, that surely this was a great misunderstanding. The man sighed. "If you come to me, all will be as it must; if you do not, I shall come and fetch you here, for truly, I have no other choice, lady." Raven tried to open her eyes, desperate and was shocked to find it as if some spell was laid on her to keep her in darkness. But she was stubborn and told herself she must look at him again to understand, told herself she must open her eyes even if she could no sooner avoid this fate than be beautiful.

A moment passed and with great difficulty, Raven shook her head again and forced her eyes to open, pleading though on the verge of unconsciousness as she gazed into the blue ones that looked down at her with a sinking feeling what she recognized as pity.

"I can't leave my sisters..." she said. Her throat was dry for no reason she could figure.

"They will be safe if you come to me, on my honor," he said with softness she had not heard so far in their exchange and she thought she saw incredulous hope in his face, but it was passing and she thought no more on its meaning as his next words were voiced. "We have a bond now, you and I and I cannot break it."

"Cannot?" she echoed.

"I shall die else you return," he confessed. She was appalled. Stranger or no, she could not let him die because of her own folly. "Lady, please try to understand as well as you might, but I am unable to speak further on this," her stranger said. A moment passed and Raven's heart was in her mouth as she nodded.

"I will return," Raven promised.

"I will not harm you," he said and she thought she sensed his gratitude more than saw it.

Three days was not a long time, she realized with a pang.

"Send me home please," she requested, only now noticing her hands were scrunched up, holding bunches of the man's shirt and she had the grace to blush slightly, and her hands dropped hastily into her lap though she herself was still cradled and held by the man. "You can set me down; I think I can stand," she said, meeker than ever but he didn't seem to hear her—or he ignored her; she couldn't be sure which.

"Three days," he both warned and asked.

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She wondered if he saw her nod before there were more ravens' wings and flurries of snow and the feeling as though she had been long submerged in water and only suddenly let up for air as she sat bolt upright near the edge of the woodland, gasping.

Had it been a dream?

"Beauty!"

She heard footsteps and looked up. It was Garth and she had been right; he looked positively furious.

"Now Garth, calm down, I—"

"Beauty!" he cut her off effectively and she thought he played dirty by using the name she loathed, even though it was customary at this point. He was shouting at her. "I told you, I told you about the mischief, now what are you doing here?" he demanded and dawn was breaking very slowly over them as he pulled her to her feet. Raven stared at him dumbly for a moment. "Beauty!" he all but roared and took her by her shoulders, shaking her.

"Nothing," she said. "I have done nothing."

"Then what is...all this?" Garth asked as he took her right hand in his and held it out so she could see what he meant. On her finger was a ring with a small rose at its plain band's center, clear as glass. Closer inspection of Raven's person also showed a small pouch that hung from a white silk cord around her neck; she took it off and opened it to find many, many small pods.

Rose seedlings, she recognized and decided that such a considerate man could not be all bad, even if he did plan to take her from her family...surely. And then she thought: so it really wasn't a dream, half-amazed, half-believing herself to be finally losing her mind.

"What is it?" Garth asked and the concern in his voice was skittish.

"I...I don't know," Raven said dolefully and then, "But I must leave three days hence." Garth's expression became further distressed, and he released her, running his hands through his hair somewhat anxiously.

"You went further than this, further than here, into the woods...after I told you..." he trailed to muttering to himself incoherently. "What mischief has contracted you?" His phrasing was more appropriate than he realized but Raven kept tactfully quiet on the facts. They needn't know more than was...well, needed. It would only worry them and she hardly knew all the realities of it herself anyway.

Suddenly all was a mystery to her and she felt herself a character in one of her beloved books, thrust into something horribly marvelous, though she knew not what made it exactly so horrible or marvel-worthy.

Shouldn't she be afraid? She had been at first, she remembered.

But was now the same? Well, she was still in the dark as ever about what was truly going to happen to her, but that aside, she found her feelings changing in regards to that uncertainty and the man behind it all.

Her mind's eye saw two blue irises fraught with pain, longing, loathing, darkness and loss; it felt his arms protectively catching her as she had collapsed; and she found she could not be frightened of this man. Magic or Mischief, she could not be certain, but she was, beyond all of that, unafraid and so being, she told a very worried Garth what he needed to hear to be less so.

"It is not Mischief, but I am bound to return to him," she sighed as one resigned.

"Not Mischief...Magic then, I take it," Garth said disbelievingly and in that sentence Raven knew his thinking to be much more akin to her own than she had ever known before and it dismayed her to only just now find this out. Garth began to shake his head as if to clear it and then stopped as if breaking from a trance, gazing at her miserably. "You are, aren't you, bound I mean? I'd heard stories you know, but I thought it foolish to tell you; I should have known better about you, Beauty, for you are like me," he smiled at her but it was vacant. "It's why I became a woodsman you know, so maybe I could catch a glimpse of the Magic or Mischief, either one, and make it back to a world I was familiar with still, but neither ever came to me. Perhaps they do not like men," he mused dryly.

"Perhaps," she nodded in mock-seriousness and added, "And yes, maybe you should have known." Now she sent him a charmingly oblivious smile she did not often use. It was the kind of smile that a lover might give, but she did not know it and she plodded on in her unknowing, of the wrench this caused in the young man's chest. "And yes, I am bonded to him," she said and he looked at her in a way that drew her to suspect something of his feelings for her from before Starfire enticed him—innocently, it should be clarified—to her affections entirely. Raven was pragmatic though when she felt it was helpful and so she pushed the notion away as he took her hand and led her completely out of the woodland.

"Come, we must tell your sisters," he sighed without looking back at her and she nodded as they walked back and into the house, closing the door behind them with a faint click. Outside, the pouch had fallen to the ground and scattered its contents in a comparatively widespread area of the yard, and the earth climbed over itself to cover the seeds in its depths, ice white roots spreading through the earthen core like Magic, which it was.

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Reveiw and let me know what you think please. If you got all the way through this first chapter, I applaud you. I know it's a bit...much. And there's contradiction, but anyhow...Reviews are much appreciated and now I've homework to do and more of **For Nothing, For Everything...For the Birds**, to write.Thank you castle in the air for your support on this; I wasn't going to post it, but you persuaded me. You give me courage! 

-rei


	2. II : Unafraid

Thanks for the fantastically supportive response, everyone. To answer a few questions, yes this will be a chaptered work and no I have not read books by Mr. Mckinley...or is it a woman? Should I? If so, let me know in your next review as I've never heard of him/her….obviously, since I can't seem to figure which gender I'm dealing with here…haha. I suppose I should say that the idea of mischief vs. magic was not taken from but definitely inspired by the fact that I just read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the millionth time. Those marauders...tsk, tsk... Heh. Okay, getting off track here...

Anyway thank you very much and it was those reviews honestly that motivated me to write this next part as quickly as it came, and inspired the story that much faster, for truly I hadn't intended to have it out till quite a bit later—I was stuck, but all's well now. And here's chapter two.

Review and thank you for doing so, always!

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**Glass**

**Chapter Two: Unafraid**

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There had been a storm of dissension at the news Raven brought—though none from Garth, who remained in a sullen sort of quiet—and she had to explain several times both why she must go and that the man had promised safety for all, including her. She insisted such a person could not be so bad.

"He is a beast," Terra bit out angrily. She had spent years scraping and pinching to get this family to where they stood today as the eldest and her feeling was that she would be damned if she was going to let it fall apart because of some unseen Mischief.

"No, he's not," Raven said, wounded for no reason she could think of, but wounded nonetheless.

"But Beauty..." Starfire trailed off dully and Garth put his arm around her, letting her find comfort against his shoulder.

"You won't go," Terra decided blithely and Raven sighed.

"Try to understand sister, please," she asked and Terra's petulant gaze grew kind; Raven rarely asked anything of anyone. Wryly, the blonde amended that thought. Raven _never_ asked anything of anyone. But she then remembered exactly what it was she asked of her and the softness was gone. Terra's stubbornness was renowned for a reason, after all.

"I do not understand and you will not leave this place!" Terra's voice hit an unending note of fury and desperation. Starfire winced and Garth's eyes grew darker—hardly possible, but it seemed so—and Raven...Raven's own temper finally flared. Maybe she was a little overly bold, but so was Terra. Maybe she was too curious for her own good. Maybe she should not have gone into the wood.

Okay, this she admitted. But there her open mind stopped.

For she had not asked to be taken into an enchantment like this; she had not gone seeking to be the bond maid of this strange lord of glass roses and forests that snowed in mid autumn. She had not wished this on anyone, least of all herself. But here it was and she had it and she had no choice and it angered her that Terra refused to even consider seeing it as thus.

"You cannot keep me here! Didn't you hear me? Were you not listening? Sister, he will die!" Raven cried in exasperation and what she feared was the beginning feeling of what it was to lose a family member. Terra's blue eyes were flint on stone as the older sister regarded her youngest sibling and Starfire was as still as a statue. Garth for his part, gently stepped away from her and went to stand slightly—though not wholly—between Raven and Terra.

"Beauty, don't leave us," the blonde's voice finally broke under her great attempt to be the figure of authority, shedding its coldness and exposing a slew of feelings that deflated Raven's own temper like a pin to a balloon. The youngest of three could swear she felt Terra's rage at not being able to do anything about this, her unbridled madness at the man who would take her sister from her, the despair at the third loss of family in her still young life, and the thought of never seeing her again. With knowledge of those emotions, Raven pushed past Garth gently and placed her hands on Terra's shoulders; her eldest sister was looking unhappily at her feet though and she did not see the gratefulness or love on Raven's face.

"I am sorry, sister," she intoned honestly and then did something very unexpected. She pulled the fiery blonde into a firm hug. It was awkward because Raven did not normally do such things, but it was genuine and Terra returned it after a moment's worth of shock.

"You cannot think you are responsible for the beast's bad fortune," Terra tried once more to persuade Raven, but the dark girl would have none of it. She was not to be fooled.

"No, but I am bound by my honor," Raven paused and added, "And he is not a beast, sister. He is...lost."

"You sound like you care for this...stranger," Garth spoke for the first time in the conversation but his words struck deep into her heart and Raven grasped for words.

"No, of course not, I do not even know him, but I have never broken a promise before," she said.

"You have never made a promise before," Garth read her thoughts, seemingly and Raven scowled now.

"If your will is that I do not go, I will disobey it. I must," she said defiantly and did her best to look like she couldn't be argued with further.

It worked, for whatever reason.

"You're so damned curious all the time," Terra laughed bitterly and then in a flash her tone was thoughtful as she said, "But you're smart too, Hellishly so, I might add." Here she grinned a grin Raven recognized in her and returned on a smaller level. The smile left her as Terra mussed her hair up brusquely and she tried to bat her hand away. "Yeah, you're smart, and you'll find a way back to us won't you Beauty?"

"You will come home," Starfire said gently and Raven glanced over her shoulder at the distressed redhead, nodding.

"I shall do my utmost," Raven promised and it occurred to her it was her second promise in less than 24 hours, and that this promise-making thing was a troublesome thing, even if it did provide temporary sanity for them. And they needed it badly.

"We will have your favorite tonight," Starfire declared with a brightness that did not reach her eyes and busied herself with the food preparations.

"You should tell your friends," Terra remarked balefully. Raven frowned. Who on earth was she talking about? Friends? She had those?

"She means Logan and Stone," Garth clarified at Raven's perplexity and she felt very stupid suddenly. Of course, for the most part they were all the friends she could ask for in their own ways—even Garfield with his truly terrible jokes.

"I shall go now," she told them and none moved to stop her. It had been six hours since dawn came and left them with morning and Garth had first ushered her back into the house. Now sunlight streamed generously through the windows of their small cottage and it seemed tinted red-gold with the way autumn was supposed to be and it was lovely.

But some part of Raven missed the cold white of the forest snow.

"Wear your cloak Beauty. You'll catch your death out there without it," Starfire called after her and Raven rolled her eyes. Sometimes Starfire worried too much about the wrong kinds of things, she felt. But for love of her sister—who she would not worry further if she could help it—she doubled back, and snatched the dark blue thing off the hook on the wall that Garth had made for it, before she left. She exited with her back to the outside world as she pulled the door shut firmly—it had this nasty tendency to swing back open if you weren't particularly obstinate with it—so when she turned around, she was startled beyond belief.

The caramel glaze of the mid-morning reflected twenty hundred shades of amber in the yard's front garden and it made the growing arches of thorn and vine and petal seem like melted gold. Raven's gaze dropped to the ground and she noticed the parcel she had misplaced before, the small satchel of seedlings. Picking it up and shaking it gently, she noted its empty state somewhat wryly; enchanted, indeed. The roses had sprung up all over in a fascinatingly graceful fashion, all over the course of a few hours; some were blooming, she could swear, right before her very eyes. And they were all white, every single one.

"Well you are very handsome aren't you?" she asked one at the center of the yard as she approached it and took a moment to inhale its scent. She marveled. It was like nothing else, and so it was like nothing she could describe beyond its indescribable nature, and that it was good, no...it was incredible. Distracted, she eyed the sepals of it with admiration and one brush of her index finger rendered her mind blank once more at its unbelievable softness, finer than silk and cool as water. Something crunched behind her and she turned. Garth stood in the doorway, door closed behind him and he slowly entered the garden, but his expression was not one of wonder like hers had been. It was dark.

"Does he think he can appease us with flowers?" Garth asked, clearly angry and his eyes flashed with things Raven had not ever known him to be capable of.

"Of course not; they were a gift, for me," she said with all certainty. Garth faced her squarely.

"A gift? Beauty...what are we to do? Every time we look at these roses we will wish it was you instead telling Garfield he's not funny, or poring over books while you bite your lip because you do that when you concentrate really hard you know..." he trailed off and his voice was not irritated any longer, but despairing. Raven stepped closer to him in the midst of the white petals and the coming of noon.

"Garth," she said quietly and paused, catching sight of a smaller rose, white and unfurling like a kitten from an afternoon nap. Kneeling in the earth, she asked it silently to please watch over her family and with unnecessary care, severed it from its root. Dusting off her skirts with the unoccupied hand, she drew close to Garth once more. "Here," she offered him the single white rose. He shook his head. Taking it would admit wholly and finally to her leaving them and he did not want to do that. Oh how he did not want to do that.

"Beauty," he breathed almost inaudibly. He was breaking her heart; she'd never seen him like this. What did he care so much anyway? Part of her mind reminded her she already had a hunch and she shushed it as she absently plucked each tiny thorn off of the rose's stem. It was a silly thought. For who could truly have feelings for her when that same person could have the ravishing and sweet, if a little neurotic, Starfire? Garth would, part of her mind insisted and she could not ignore it anymore, peculiar and unbelievable as it was to her. Raven was not stupid and would not turn a blind eye to the nature of this situation, slowly coming to be obvious.

"Shhh," she smiled up at him and took his hands, folding them gently around the rose. "It will protect you."

"It is not us that I am worried about," Garth said, still upset, but he did not release the flower.

"I know, and I'll be fine too. At least it is not Terra or Starfire who had the mindlessness to wander late at night into the wood," Raven tried to tease lightly but Garth only frowned more deeply.

"Why do you say that?" he asked and she was taken aback. It hadn't occurred to her that she shouldn't say it, for it was to her, the truth.

"Well, Terra supports much of the house with her sewing and with your help of course as the woodsman, and Starfire is your...is...you are to be married," she stumbled over this last part awkwardly; it did not help to have Garth's eyes so intensely upon her and she drew her cloak closer unconsciously. "It would be rather a difficult thing for you to wed with her trapped in some enchanted wood where it is always winter."

"Yes, I suppose it would," he said without feeling. "But I wish you wouldn't go Beauty. I," he paused, fully aware of the weight of his next words and arguing with them to the last second. His gut won out in the end though as he sighed and, tucking the rose in his right breast pocket, took Raven's hands in his own. "I can protect you I think. Won't you stay? Please..." he trailed off and now Raven arched a brow. Her game of guess-and-check was only half done. She felt the checking could come now, that it must.

"Why are you behaving like this, Garth? I have never seen you thus," she said with all kindness and an equal amount of apprehensive concern for his answer. She waited. He sighed. Noon had passed a half hour ago and she was still in the front yard trying to understand something she was beginning to feel she wasn't supposed to...or for someone's sake, ought not to.

"If I tell you this, it must last us our whole lives through, for I could not say it knowing you would only forget with the next morning," Garth said and Raven was reminiscent of the eloquence of the stranger in the wood amidst his fineness of words. She nodded, silent. "I behave like this because I love you, Beauty...Raven," and he held her hands a little firmer in his own as he continued, "Not like the sister people have saddled you with me as, nor as the sister you will soon be to me when I take my vows with Star, but as I love you now, completely."

"I always thought you were not interested in such things, until Starfire approached you and then I assumed you had just been waiting for the right person to ask," Raven said after a proper moment's thoughtful quiet and Garth smiled a little. "Do not hurt her, Garth." She said it out of protectiveness and out of expectancy, already knowing it was hardly necessary. She knew he would never hurt any one of them by design.

"I do love her, you needn't worry that my feelings are untrue; they're full and very real, but a heart is not bound to one alone, I've found. This is not a fairy tale after all, for all its magic and mischief." He released her hands softly.

"And if I had come to you…before Starfire?" Raven, for all her pragmatism, was now finding in light of glass roses and binding enchantments that her curiosity ran wild and rampant unlike ever before.

"We would have danced...and talked outside of the public nature of the stables where Logan would always be talking too much or the forge where Stone would be too scrutinizing to say anything so private..." Garth said.

"And?" She swore she felt something slip through her fingers, but it must have been her imagination, for she was holding nothing to speak of.

"And...I do not know beyond that Beauty, but I felt I must tell you in case..." he swallowed hard and could not finish. He looked down at the soil and Raven read in his face now what had been there since the day he had met her, if only she had taken the time to see it.

But would it have made a real difference, her mind reflected. Would he have been the one for you, open eyes or closed?

No, her heart answered, a little sadly, for Garth was a very kind man.

He will be alright; he has Starfire now, her mind reassured her.

In time, her heart corrected and her mind agreed.

"But you do not regret..." It was her turn to trail.

"I don't," he said adamantly and now had courage again to look her in the eyes. Their shared gaze was powerful and brief, like so many meaningful things, and gradually they shared the softest of smiles too.

"I'll be home by supper," she said.

"We'll be waiting," he replied and she turned, exiting the small wooden gate that divided their yard from the dirt road that led to the town.

Garth watched until she was completely out of sight, not certain what he had done was the wisest of things, but also knowing what he had done was as necessary as it was unwise, and that was at least a little bit soothing.

When she got to the stables Garfield was tending to a white stallion who went by the name of Rorek.

"Garfield," she greeted from the entrance and he turned with a wide grin.

"Beauty, doll, how's life?" he asked jovially. She winced inwardly.

"Well," she began.

"Well's as good as anything I suppose," Garfield said, taking it wrong, as usual. She rolled her eyes with a smile, amused in spite of herself.

"Hold on a second there Gar, I didn't say that. I was about to tell you. I'm leaving," she said. Garfield's grin dimmed to nothing.

"What?"

"I'm leaving, in less than three days now," she said.

"But why?" he frowned now, hopping over the one of the stable doors, landing in front of her. He wiped his hands on the sides of his breeches and exhaled roughly. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"Not exactly," she replied and green eyes observed her more critically than they ever had.

"Well, I guess I understand if you can't tell me the specifics, but at least tell me about how long you'll be gone. Arella's going to have a fit," he explained and Raven found herself grateful for this unexpected streak of patient understanding.

"I do not think I'll be coming back to Green Hill," she confessed now and Garfield started, appalled.

"Never?"

"I cannot be sure," Raven sighed and Garfield considered it a moment.

"Take her with you."

"What?"

"She's not a 'what', she's a 'who' and her name is Arella thanks to you, Miss Bookworm. She's that damn horse you've taken a liking to and who has taken such a liking to you in return, Miss Beauty, that she probably won't do anything I want her to while you're gone." He finished with plenty of emphasis on the finality of his words but Raven shook her head still.

"That is too kind of you," she began.

"Rubbish. It's not about me being kind, it's about me not being a monster; if I didn't send Arella over there with you, she'd die sure as anything else," Garfield paused. "Besides, she doesn't like anyone half as much as she likes you. So just accept my offer, will you?" His hands sat in an exasperated fashion on his waist.

"Thanks Gar," she said and he snorted, waving his hand dismissively.

"It's nothing. Go tell Stone. I'm sure he'll want to know," he said and shooed her away, telling her he'd bring Arella around to the house in two days. Late afternoon was giving way to dusk as she came upon the forge.

"I hear you're leaving us," he called from within and her eyes widened.

"You know already?" she asked.

"Word gets around; Green Hill's not very big," the blacksmith shrugged and hammered something other than sense into the ironwork materializing under his careful craftsmanship.

"Right, I should've known," Raven admitted and took seat not too close or far from Victor who continued to work, dedicated and focused.

"Well girl, I can't say I won't miss you," he rubbed the back of his head and eyed her thoughtfully.

"I'm glad," she replied cheekily and he laughed.

"Yeah, yeah, well, you just take care of yourself. I don't know where you're headed, but if you can ever find the time to come back here—"

"Victor!" she cut him off, angry suddenly. He set his hammer down.

"What?" he asked and now she saw the austere shade of his eyes and the shallowness of his look; he was upset with her...and all for an invalid reason, she raged mentally.

"If I had a choice I would come back very often, I might not even leave at all! How could you even think that I would just abandon you like that? This is my home," Raven's eyes flared dangerously in the forge firelight and the blacksmith could have sworn he saw sparks in them—glimmering like angry shards of glass—but he shrugged it off as he shot back.

"Would you, Beauty? Would you? I know you better than most here and I'd say you were itching to leave, just aching for a chance to get out and now you have it! What makes you think you can fool me?" He was maddeningly loud against the vague din of the forge but Raven saw through it quickly; he wanted her to stay and knew she wouldn't and he hated it.

"I would. I would and you'll have to trust me on that since I may not ever have the opportunity to prove it to you," she gathered herself in her cloak and turned to leave, standing to go lean on the open frame of the entry. "And I never, ever thought I could fool you, Vic, I never did...but I see you've already done that for me."

"Beauty," he intoned, remorseful now at his temper but still angered by her will to leave. So he said nothing more and Raven dutifully filled the gaping silence with her voice, soft and sad.

"Good-bye Vic. Be safe," she said and with a gentle flick of her cloak, she walked out of sight. Victor took up his hammer and struck it hard on the metal piece, sending its hard-crafted bits to every side, flames tickling the fragments. He hated how everyone he ever cared about left, hated more maybe that it was always somewhere he could not follow.

First there had been his adolescent sweetheart, who he affectionately had called Bumblebee for a number of reasons. She'd died before Raven and her family had even come to Green Hill. It was a natural death, if premature, but that made it no less painful for he who was left behind. Then there was his friend Roy, Roy Harper. They'd been best friends since before Vic could really recall and one day he'd just disappeared. Well that wasn't entirely true; Roy had been doing negotiations over land for some lord or some such of authority. It had been basic real estate, nothing more. But Harper had disappeared within two weeks of his persuasion and had not been heard from since. So, he too was presumed dead. Now Raven would be going too and while she would not die—or so she said; Victor had reasons to be skeptical—she might never come back. Victor's heart grew cold at that prospect, and the uproarious fire around him, thrusting the work area into a frightening mix of red torrents and yellow-orange tongues, did nothing to warm him.

He let his hammer drop as he sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands, hoping he would never grow attached to someone, to something, to anything, ever again.

The loss of something so precious was too great and the pain was far too much.

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Raven felt her friend's desolation as she dragged her feet home, sun going down behind her. She wondered at it, but it wasn't that she did not empathize with Victor usually. In fact, she was quite accustomed to being able to note and sense his feelings more clearly than most because of their closeness. This, however, seemed different, felt different. It was as though she was actually _experiencing_ his pain firsthand and she held a hand to her heart, fearing it might burst with tears that were not her own.

I wonder if this is residual magic from the wood, she thought absently, but shelved the idea as the cottage came into view. No sooner had she unlatched the small gate when Starfire bounded out.

"Beauty, there you are dear. Come, you almost missed it," she smiled brightly and Raven recognized the necessity of false ease when she saw it, so she smiled back and followed.

Night was upon them before any of them wished it, and the first day was gone with the stars.

The last two days passed too quickly and it was a blur, not because there was so much going on, but because no one wanted to remember too clearly what was happening.

Or what was going to happen.

Terra berated more inanimate objects than usual though—scolding the fireplace, the well, the gate, and the front door all within the span of the second day's morning—and Starfire cooked an ungodly amount of food to soother her anxieties, insisting Raven would need to bring most of it with her, because what did a beast eat?

Raven refrained from reminding both of her sisters that he was a man after that first conversation. Their minds were set and she knew better than to try and change those settings; it was about as futile as someone arguing with her own self and that was downright impossible

Garth was gone most of the time, for which Raven was both grateful and disheartened.

Love was a complex thing she had thought to never encounter outside of her sisters' embraces and motherly chiding, or Victor's over protectiveness. That's not so, her mind rolled its nonexistent eyes at her and she rolled her own eyes back at it as if to say, what are you jabbering on about? It occurred to her that arguing with her mind was a little less of a sane thing to be doing, but she was putting less and less stock in sanity as a whole concept anyway, so she shrugged off her boundaries as she answered herself: you knew. Somehow, you knew a little bit. You felt him watching you. But I did not recognize, she insisted and that was true.

After all, a person who thought they could not be loved in _that_ way would never think to see what to them did not exist. At this point, her mind's offense retreated, leaving Raven to think more softly on the subject.

Garth was absent the second morning as soon as the sun was up and did not join them for meals, and she thought he meant to avoid her. She admitted to herself that the awkward feelings between them now would be better left to imagination rather than fruition and logically strove to appreciate his nonappearance, as much as it hurt her.

And it hurt her a great deal, for all that her wisdom told her to lock that hurt away.

For she loved him too, if not the exact way he loved her.

It did not escape her that she very well _might_ have reciprocated if she had danced with him, had talked...had known.

But this was not to be and so she loved him as well and as wholly as she might, which in her defense, was genuinely and no less than if she did care for him like more than a friend. He was dear to her for many reasons, not the least of which was that he was an intelligent young man who appreciated similar things as her, reading being one of them, as much as he made fun of her for it.

Briefly she wondered if he begrudged her, but he had said he had no regrets and she believed him. He did not have the look of one who regretted much at all, really, and that was admirable, something not many could attest to.

Similarly, she did not begrudge him not being around in her last days there. She understood too well and too much to hold it against him and she was very, very shrewd, for all that she was the youngest of three.

On the morning of her third day though, Garth was there at breakfast and he even offered her a smile as authentic as he was—which was entirely—and she returned it. There was the passing of salt and some light-hearted talk but soon it was filled by a knowing quiet.

"Tonight?" asked Starfire. Raven nodded and strategically bit into a roll to keep from having to answer another question like that. She chewed slowly.

"I've half a mind to tie you down here, Beauty," Terra chuckled without humor. Raven swallowed a piece of the roll—which she was fast learning a new appreciation for—as slowly as possible to excuse herself from responding to that; she didn't know how to.

"She'll slip out," Starfire said, pushing some vegetables around on her plate for no apparent reason. Raven bit her tongue from an indignant retort and the rest of the meal continued in anxious quiet.

"Where will you be today, Beauty?" Garth asked as she stood up from the table.

"In the garden," she replied and went there.

Garth, Starfire, and Terra exchanged looks but said nothing and soon went about their daily work; the every-day chore regiment was a welcome distraction in the face of all that was to transpire.

Terra visited her once during the mid-afternoon.

"Beauty...do you mind?" she asked, referring to her coming into the garden's space...into Raven's space. Raven glanced at her sister out of the corner of her eye speculatively; Terra rarely asked anything.

"Of course not," was the response. She saw Terra nod out of her peripheral vision before going back to tending to some tangled rose vines. She hadn't known roses were capable of growing on vines before this...incident...and she was still somewhat awed by it.

"I wanted to ask you," again with the asking, Raven thought, a little worried now, and looked fully at Terra who continued, "Are you...very afraid?"

Raven considered.

Slowly she shook her head, no.

Terra bit her lip and, nodding understanding, retreated to the safety of their small cottage.

The day passed faster than any wished and they all found themselves back in the small dining area for dinner sooner than they could account for. It was like someone was speeding time up but that was a silly thought and they attributed the quickness of the day to their own anxieties

"You don't want to go, do you Beauty?" Starfire asked, a dangerous mix of despair and curiosity pouring from her.

"I—" Raven stopped as there was a knock on the door. "I'll get it." She said sharply and pushed herself back from the table. She set her napkin down, moving to the door with a less hurried pace than her statement, trying hard to not look like she was being evasive.

"It's me," Gar said through the door and Raven opened it. He grinned.

"Nice set-up," he complimented, seeing the others at the table behind her and then he gestured at Arella, standing as docilely as a four-poster pony outside the gate. "I didn't want to mess the garden up," he explained and added, "How is it these...flowers are growing in the middle of fall?"

"Roses, they're roses and...they're special," Raven decided on and Gar nodded.

"Well Beauty, take care wherever you're headed. Arella'll watch out for you, I'm sure," he added in all seriousness and after a pause, he embraced her. It was short and a little uncomfortable, but Raven appreciated it and returned it.

"Thank you," she said and meant it.

"Bye then, Beauty. Miss Starfire, Garth...Miss Terra," he nodded emphatically as he addressed her eldest sister with a bit of a brighter smile. Terra waved blithely back and Starfire shook her head, but she was smiling. Garth, for his part rolled his eyes, amused at the silent exchange. Garfield had been showing interest in Terra for some time now and it seemed she was maybe beginning to return the sentiments—she'd never waved to him before this night.

"That was very kind of him," Starfire noted pleasantly and Raven agreed with a nod as she watched him disappear down the road. She was about to close the door to finish the meal when something caught her eye and instead, she walked out into the front yard.

Minutes passed.

"Beauty?" Garth called after her and when she did not respond, he and her sisters went to the door. She was still there—their pulses settled down as they saw her physically there—and she stood in the midst of the roses. Her pale skin seemed to match the pearl loveliness of the roses in the moonlight and for a moment one might have taken her to be a bit of a dream. But then she turned to them and the sadness in her eyes broke the trance.

"It is time," she said.

"You cannot stay even to...to finish supper?" Starfire inquired helplessly.

"I cannot," Raven sighed and held up that which had caught her eye moments before: a glass rose. "It's his way of calling to me, I think." She added the disclaiming clause because she truly wasn't certain and did not wish to lie. When no one else spoke she moved past them, glass rose in hand, and went up into the attic, only to return minutes later with the few things she had finally decided on bringing the night before.

"Don't go, Beauty," Terra implored once more, no longer ordering or demanding, but pleading, and this was a side of Terra no one else had ever seen. Raven was moved by her sister's show of honest feeling and felt more than understood how she went to wrap her arms around the blonde who couldn't stop shaking her head in denial.

"Sister," Starfire could only say and Raven was awash with guilt at the tears in her sister's bright green eyes.

"I'm so sorry Star," she intoned as gently as possible and stroked her sister's hair as comfortingly as she could, feeling her tremble within their embrace, defeated and bleak. Eventually though Raven had to step away and Terra put an arm around Starfire's shaking shoulders, drawing her near to console both of them. A hand laid itself on Raven's shoulder, which caused her to break her stare from her two sisters that loved her so, and to turn and face the only other person there.

"He does not need you like we need you," Garth said softly and she heard the 'I' in the 'we' but discarded it as she knew she must.

"He may need me more than you or I can know," Raven said with a resolve Garth recognized well and he let his hand slip off her shoulder silently.

The air was cold again, and it seemed to reach in long fingered hands out of the wood and wrap its wispy appendages around the small cottage; Raven could swear she saw frost edging itself around the petals of her magnificent and enchanted rose garden. Pulling her cloak around herself more tightly, she approached Arella.

"Shhh, Arella, it's just me," she said quickly but quietly when the horse gained a panicked look at first. Her voice calmed the animal and she mounted effortlessly, seeming almost to float up and into the saddle—it was still a wonder to everyone else that someone so petite could mount without a footstool or block or even a leg-up. Turning Arella to face the house once more, perhaps for the last time, Raven surveyed all she had come to hold dear.

"We love you always, Beauty...Raven," Terra spoke loudly to force away tears and succeeded mostly, but the slight waver in her voice was terribly evident.

"Always," Starfire added with more strength than Raven had ever given her credit for, until now.

"And we will be here," Garth finished for the three of them, leaving the 'should you return' hanging unspoken in the open space.

"I love you too," Raven said at last, not knowing what else she could possibly bring herself to say, and rode away as fast as she could. She plowed into the forest, Arella's mane tangled in her fingers like a complicated weave, heedless of branches or anything else, even of the glass garden in the center—or what she presumed to be the center—of this forest.

She was blind with the loss of her family.

One never really did know the degree to which one felt for anyone until they were faced with their indefinite absence. Her heart beat wildly in her chest and the cold around her was making it hard to breathe but she was absolutely certain that Arella had a sense of where to go, even if she didn't. So she buried her face in the warmth of the neck of her horse and let slip tears she would not allow back there at the cottage. Back there she had needed to be strong, but now, feeling more alone than she ever had, and not by choice, she found no restraint left in her to keep it locked away. And so she wept, bitterly and incoherently.

It was some time before she realized Arella had stopped her headlong plow and she herself raised her head to look around.

This is not the rose garden, was her first thought.

Oh dear, was her second.

For there, almost rising out of the uncanny mist before her, was a castle.

"I am not afraid," she said to the castle; it seemed to grow in the shadowed light. "I am not afraid," she repeated to herself now.

"Then you are a fool," a familiar voice said and Raven's gaze dropped from the topmost tower to five feet in front of her.

"So are we all," she returned and felt him consider her answer and her presence as his diamond blue eyes scrutinized her shamelessly.

"Come," he said at last.

And she did, only vaguely aware of the great iron gates swinging to close behind her with a mighty and finalizing clang.

"Leave your horse." His order was not wholly unexpected but Raven still found herself unmoving. He arched a brow at her and she read annoyance in his face, but ignored it. Was it not he who had ordered her here? She would act as she pleased, she decided indignantly.

"Where?" she asked, feeling dumb in spite of her resolve to be bold.

"Here will do," he replied, disinterested. "Hurry along," he added. She frowned and dismounted with extra grace, care, and lack of the requested 'hurry'.

"I'll visit every day, Arella," she told the horse, stroking its neck affectionately. A thought occurred to her. "By whom will she be...taken to the stables?" she inquired.

"The help," he said shortly. So he has servants, Raven mused and then further thought how silly and impossible it must be to maintain such a large palace, even with a thousand servants or 'help' as he called them.

Perhaps it is enchanted too, she theorized as she eyed the hand the young lord proffered to her with some misgiving.

"I said I would not harm you," he said in the tone of a man who spoke to an uncooperative child. She bristled.

"I recall, sir," she added this last part and again, he arched a brow. It seemed a favorite of his expressions.

"Not 'beast' or monster?" he asked, curious and still—she noticed—defensive.

"You are only a man," Raven said without disrespect and found her earlier words to be truer than she'd expected.

She was not afraid.

"Only a man," he whispered and his blue eyes seemed to cloud. An unexpected surge of sympathy for something she did not yet know or dare to understand, struck her as Raven placed her palm cordially against his, and the two beautiful strangers entered the castle.

Hand in hand.

* * *

Thank you so much for all of the reviews; they meant a lot to me, mean a lot to me. Please keep on, if you've got a second. All the thank-you I can muster! 

-Rei

Next Chapter: _Beast_


	3. III : Beast

I definitely don't own Teen Titans.

Much thank you for all reviews, especially those of you keeping on with this story and letting me know generously what you think of as each chapter is posted. I really appreciate it. Your comments make my day pretty much, to be honest.

Does that say I obsess over fanfiction too much? Hmmm...ah well. Whatever. I like it.

Now then, a shorter chapter, but a chapter nonetheless:

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**Glass**

**Chapter Three: Beast**

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* * *

**

"Where are your roses?" she asked, eyes taking in the way the stranger's cape billowed behind him in a wild wave of night. They had foregone the lord and ladylike thing of holding hands for now; it was far too awkward and they both had silently agreed that neither of them much liked being touched anyway.

That too was uncomfortable. But what can I do? Raven wondered. She dared not lie.

"In the wood," he said without slowing and Raven had absently noticed how the crunching sound of his boots on snow had turned to a clicking one against stone as they walked through the castle. The echo was unnerving and the shadows seemed to flicker at her unkindly, like invisible watchers. But she shrugged it off, determined still to be as fearless as she could. She did not want to appear weak.

"Where are we going?" she asked after a few uncounted minutes of silence and at this the stranger paused so abruptly that Raven nearly ran into him. His back was still to her but she could swear he seemed to be considering something.

"Where would you...like to go?" he inquired at last, facing her, and Raven's immediate thought was: home. But she did not say it and counted herself as fortunate when his blue eyes didn't seem to notice her sudden bout of despondency. In fact, she could be wrong, but he seemed to have some difficulty with his next words, focusing overly on them. "Would you...that is, are you...have you...do you want food?" He looked stricken.

"It has been a long time since you last had guests," she surmised and he blinked at her, running a hand through his dark, beautiful hair, nodded and now Raven found herself certain that he looked far too sheepish to be beastly. Being sheepish, for all that its root suggested otherwise, was a very human look to have about yourself—she thought so anyway.

"My hospitality wanes," he admitted and Raven half expected an arrogant smile that never came. It occurred to her that maybe he didn't smile at all, but this was a particularly unpleasant thought, beast or no, so she put it aside as best she could.

"I don't care," she said blandly and he sighed.

"You don't, do you?" he asked.

"Not a hint," Raven shook her head dully and paused. "I am not hungry, but I would like to know where I am to be kept," she almost stopped here but something inside her extracted what small courtesies her sister Starfire had been able to engrain in her, "...please."

"Come," he said for the second time so far and she didn't like the sound of it any more than the first, but she went anyway. It is not like I have a great deal of choice in the matter, she thought, discouraged, but again she kept this to herself. Raven lost count of the long, grand corridors of marble and the faces in the haunting portraits on the walls seemed a mess of indistinguishable eyes and mouths before her captor stopped.

"Here?" she inquired, voice breaking and scowled. Blue eyes questioned this expression, thinking her displeasure to be with the room when in reality—but what was reality in this strange place?—her unhappiness was due to how meekly she had asked 'here'. Her sisters had always said she was overly critical of everything about herself, but she never really listened to them, thinking them to simply be placating her. Oh she had heard them, definitely, but never _listened_. Otherwise she might have noticed there was too much compassion in their voices for there to be placation, but she did not listen and so, she never knew.

"Here," he nodded and opened the door. There was a nameplate on it, but it was blank and it made the huge snow-white door seem far less stupendous than it really was. "They call you Beauty, do they not?"

"They do," she agreed slowly, too slowly, and he who was listening heard what she did not deign to say.

"But you do not like it." It was a statement, not a guess or a question and Raven gazed directly at this striking person for the first time since the rose garden. He was older than her, she now realized, though not by much. Yet his eyes made him seem as aged as they made him beautiful, and this was very.

Very and very.

"Beauty is fine," she finally said, surprising herself and watched in milder fascination than most as something invisible scrawled in loopy handwriting 'Beauty' on the nameplate. I am willing to bet _he_ doesn't have a loopy nameplate on his door, Raven thought briefly. _He_ did not seem surprised, however and she wondered at this even as she asked, "How do you call yourself?"

"...I have no name that I can recall and there is not much need for...names in this place anymore," he replied and his tone was so distant that she could almost see the rocky shore he stood on, waves crashing like thunderclaps on the edge. But it was all in his eyes and when she looked away she found herself back in front of her room, his hand still restlessly on the doorknob.

_Her_ room? She frowned deeper; it was not well of her to think of it like that. She already had a room and she would go back one day, she thought fiercely. No, this was not her room. It was one of his, she told herself dutifully, almost savagely and clawed the idea into her mind, lest she forget from whence she came and where she truly belonged.

Some part of her told her she had never felt the sense of 'belonging' though and, startled by this part of herself, she did the only reasonable thing she could think of in that moment: she ignored it.

Instead, she stared back at the stranger, and took her first few cautious steps in as, with a wave of his hand, the blue-eyed man directed her to explore her new living space. "The nightly meal will be within two turns of the hall clock," he told her and she nodded as he turned to leave her for a time.

"If I am hungry, I shall join you," she replied.

"You will be hungry," he stated, circling back to stand outside her door.

"Maybe," she allowed, leaning on the frame lightly.

"You will," he insisted, putting his hand on the frame, a tension in him quite suddenly apparent.

"If I am, I shall be there," she retorted now, irritated, standing up straighter and crossing her arms pointedly.

"Why do you insist on being so difficult, lady?" he asked, resorting to formality, and she noted how painfully difficult it seemed to be for him to curb his temper. His hand shook visibly on the frame and she could see the lines around his mouth fighting between indifference and outright anger.

"Why do _you_ trap girls in your glass garden and bind them to you without their consent? What is it you get out of such trickery?" she countered. His expression grew very dark now and Raven, for all her courage, felt the edges of fear creep in on her; this man was _already_ dark and to see the shadows take over him wholly was the kind of thing only a stupid person would not be frightened of. Raven was not stupid.

"I do not," he said coldly. "It is the way of the forest. You should not have come," he continued. "And then, to admit you were lost? All others have had the sense to keep their mouths shut; they have left unscathed," he spat bitterly now and when she looked as though she might interrupt he drew closer to her, making her lose her breath. "Do you truly see only a man, lady? Or is it the beast in man's clothing? Do you see a...a villain who would hold young girls in his highest tower for power...for pleasure...for evils?" His tone kept getting more and more outraged, more and more distant and at first, her heart chilled. But then he said something else, "You know nothing." Her eyes flared and she was afire with her own displeasure.

"I know enough!" she shouted, her words throwing themselves back at her through the echoing hallways, but she didn't hear them. "I know that whether you meant to or not, you are the reason I may never see my family again. You are the reason I am in this mess, and I don't care if you think I'm right or wrong! I know what I know! I know you are short-tempered and expect people to bow down to your whims! I know you are not a beast because a beast is an animal capable of things you have shown yourself incapable of. No, you are not a beast, sir. You are a man, only a man, a cold, bitter, self-centered, detestable man." She calmed down—though whether from shortness of breath or actual relaxation of her nerves she wasn't certain—and took in his response with as void an expression as she could master. To her well-bridled confusion, he laughed and the sound was slow and empty.

"You know nothing," he said again. Her temper returned in record time.

"Then help me, _milord_, to understand something. For instance, why do you call yourself a beast, or assume I do? The closest you can come to a truth is that my sisters called you thus," she took on a calculating tone and dared to inject a careful amount of skepticism.

"I know they called me so. I thought surely your sentiments would be the same," he said shortly and unfeeling. She suspected there was more reason than he let on and pressed forward.

"There is another reason! I do not know how I can tell but I can tell! Perhaps it is this bond you so cryptically refer to when it is _convenient_ for you, but I can tell! Be straight with me, for I know you keep something from me and I will not have it! You may be lord and master here _sir_ but I am not going to—" she stopped short as his words sunk in at last. "How did you know they thought of you as a beast before I told you of it?" Her eyes reflected the flickering light coming from the many candles that lined the hall and their violet hue seemed to almost glow.

"I know many things," he replied evasively.

"Tell me and I shall come to dinner," she bargained.

"You are in no position to make deals," he said and she understood he was still affronted by her most recent outburst. She also didn't care and actually felt he very much deserved to be put in his place, master of the castle or no, but she kept this tactfully to herself. Some things could wait to be said. She would probably be here a while, she knew with some sense of loss.

"Fine," she settled for and turned to retreat into the room he had provided. She thought he had gone too, but there was a shuffling sound and she gazed over her shoulder to see he had readjusted himself and now leaned against the doorframe. It looked like he might be considering something unpleasant, several somethings really, but it seemed like neither one was very appealing to him and eventually with a roll of his eyes, he met her gaze.

"Listen and listen closely, _Beauty_," he emphasized her nickname and she could not hold back a wince, feeling thoroughly foolish for not giving him her real name earlier. Beauty seemed to be the last thing that could exist here, in name or otherwise.

"I am listening, _milord_," she forced herself to say, pleased at the displeased reaction she got from him at the use of 'milord' again. Good, let him frown at me like the problem I am; he asked for it, Raven thought, resentment renewed at his evident superiority which only seemed to increase as he continued.

"One: I am more a beast than you can know. You are smart, I grant you that," he paused, noting her bristle in response to this as though it had nothing to do with him 'granting' her anything, but continued. "And as you are smart, I will also grant that you will probably understand—when your emotions cloud you less—that a 'beast' is not wholly defined by animalistic traits but by far darker things than any animal would contract himself to." That was only the first, she wondered weakly now. That had been more than she bargained for but she struggled to look unfazed as his voice pierced her again. "Two: I know how your sisters think of me because as I am in ways more than the mere man you paint me to be; I see more clearly than others. And, lady, I shall leave the interpretation up to your tenaciously bookish wits."

He pushed himself off the frame of the door and Raven hated the grace with which he did it, with which he seemed to do everything. How could such a horrible man have that kind of fluidity, that sensuous charm?

It must be Mischief, she thought stubbornly. What other reason could there be?

"I shall see you at the second strike of the clock. When it is time you need only walk the corridor. It will bring you to me."

And he was gone, the edge of his ebony cape the last thing she saw as it too disappeared from view of the doorway. The door itself swung a little unhappily in the limbo between being propped open and being firmly shut. Raven scowled; she really didn't want to go anywhere near where that..._man_ had just been. She almost painstakingly kept telling herself he was one in an almost desperate need to convince herself. His words had made more of an impact than she wanted to admit.

But the door closed would be nice…

_Close_, she thought absently.

It closed.

She jumped.

_Oh for Heaven's sake_ was her silent reaction.

"Oh dear," was her verbal exclamation to herself, as she eyed the shut door with some misgivings. Enchanted like the wood, she thought and then asked no one in particular, "When am I to have some sense of peace?" She paced a bit and came to the four-posted bed, sitting on it eventually with a sigh. The silence seemed oppressive and Raven spoke again to fill the void: "You know, it is not very nice to think that one day I could be in a foul mood—not unlike this one, mind you—and wish something awful on something or someone and whatever awful thing I wish would actually happen!"

"It is a bit of a problem," someone said. Raven whirled a full three hundred and sixty degrees as if she were on defense for an ambush; she sort of was.

"Who is there?" she called.

"Someone," someone replied unhelpfully and Raven exchanged her momentary apprehension for something more akin to extreme irritation.

"You are as hospitable as..." she trailed off, realizing she still did not know the name of the man with the glass roses. But wait, no, he did not have a name for her to know, or so he said. That could be a problem, she mused.

"It's not his fault he's that way," the same someone said dolefully. Raven sighed.

"That I could see you, perhaps..." she asked without asking.

"Very well," the still same someone said and Raven gasped. It started as an outline of light, a dull shimmer of white-blue, and slowly it outlined the face and physique of a young man with a cocky grin. Apprehensively, she held out a hand. The outline shook his head. "It is of no use," he said. And he was right.

Her hand went right through him.

"What are you?" she asked. His grin grew, if possible, and she found herself fast losing her annoyance. This...form was at least friendlier than her subjugator. To her further amusement, he made a show of adjusting his collar and inhaled importantly before executing a sweeping bow.

"I am...a very unfortunate merchant," he said and Raven did not fail to hear the cheekiness in his answer. She did her best not to smile at his melodramatic behavior.

"Unfortunate? I take it you were not born that way then," she commented.

"You are correct in your thinking, lady," he said and she let go a sigh of exasperation.

"Please, do not call me so. I am not a 'lady' at all, just a...person," she decided on and the outline shrugged.

"As you wish, Beauty," he said and she was not surprised he knew her name. There was life everywhere, she was realizing in this magicked place and soon she thought she might grow to also be unsurprised by things as preposterous as green men and beings that could shoot fire from their eyes and hands.

But maybe not, for such things were entirely too impossible of course.

"So, a better question perhaps, is _who_ are you, my transparent acquaintance?"

"Oh my name? Well, back home they nicknamed me Speedy, but before I got...well, you know," he gestured at his current state and she nodded even as he finished, "But yeah, before I went all invisible-man, they called me Roy, Roy Harper."

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Thank you for the reviews. I know this one was a great deal shorter but it was mainly to exemplify and allude to part of why our nameless, blue-eyed master of the castle is the theoretical 'beast' and to introduce Roy. Yeah you thought he was just there for Victor's back-story didn't you? Hehe. Nope, there's a reason for everything in this story so pay close attention. Some small things will come into play later on.

Review if you've got a sec! Thanks.

-Rei

p.s. for those of you wondering when the nameless man we know to be our beloved Boy Wonder gets his name—Richard or Robin, I wonder—that comes next. So, um, thoughts?


	4. IV : Alias

Disclaimer: don't own teen titans...yet.

Rei thanks all who read this, especially all who review and even more especially: Cherry Jade and alena-chan

Let me know what you think of this chapter.

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_Glass_

_Chapter Four: Alias_

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So far she'd discerned her new outline of a friend could float, walk through walls and make himself entirely invisible if he wanted to.

What he couldn't do, Raven thought dryly, was shut up.

Roy, or "Speedy" as she now knew he preferred, had a fine knack for charging headlong into one-sided conversations; so far he'd spoken on the state of the castle, the moodiness of its keeper, the fact that it never stopped being winter in this magicked place, and the most recent but probably not last topic he now proceeded to tackle was a list of the pros and cons of going to dinner.

"Speedy," Raven began.

"...of course, then you're chancing a great deal of, blah, blah, blah..." he prattled on, charming and completely ignorant.

"Speedy," Raven tried again.

"...but if you don't go then he'll probably get angry—have you seen him angry? No, I don't suppose you have. He's a real grouch sometimes.—and then when he does get angry, and he will, you'll be upset and then it defeats the purpose of not going to not get upset because it'll altogether be a very upsetting experience for the two of you anyway and—"

"ROY!" She shouted now and he stopped mid-sentence, mouth still open. She sighed. "I'm going. He did answer my question and I told him I would." Smoothing her skirts needlessly, Raven stared unhappily at her hands. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it." At this, Roy chuckled and she sent him a penetrating stare. He shrugged.

"You're both very stubborn," he said as if it explained everything.

"_He_ is difficult," Raven said, insinuating there was at least an inch of difference between how she acted and her captor did. She knew there wasn't, but there was little to no chance of her ever admitting it out loud. On that thought, she smiled just a little; it seemed she'd only gone on and proved Roy's point.

"He's not so bad...on his good days," Roy offered and Raven eyed him, skeptical at best.

"What did he mean when he said he 'sees' more than others?" she asked, not certain she really wanted to know, but unable to curb her curiosity. Her friend rubbed the back of his head—or he seemed to; Raven wasn't certain that such actions should be possible with a being that wasn't solid.

"Well, I'm not sure. See, that's part of the problem. No one here really knows much of anything outside of what he tells us and...well," Roy trailed off in a chuckle much less filled with mirth than his others and Raven read sadness in his eyes for the first time.

"You have been trapped here, I gather," she guessed. He nodded.

"Longer than I can remember," he said.

Longer than he can remember, Raven thought and a renewed sense of bleakness came over her. Would she be there so long as to forget that too?

Would she be there forever?

She didn't have time to think further on the matter as the clock tolled like a call for the dead.

"So are you going?" Roy asked as lightly as if he were asking her what color dress she would be wearing that day and Raven simply rolled her eyes at him before stepping out into the hall.

It will bring you to me.

That's what he had said.

Very well, she thought. If it will bring me to him, then it will bring me to him.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked the presence she knew permeated this domicile, even if she couldn't see it, and then almost lost her balance. The world seemed to ricochet unnaturally around her, as though she were inside a giant sphere and being rolled about in it.

It was not a very comfortable feeling.

But almost as quickly as it had begun, it was over and Raven found herself standing, staring dumbly at two large, elegant and ominous doors. The carving seemed to have images in the little bevels of the sides and they almost seemed to move, very lifelike, but more importantly than that, Raven realized the hall had indeed transported her.

She was here.

Or there.

Wherever.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose, doing her best to repress the nearly perpetual scowl she had been wearing for the past twenty-four hours. Maybe she wasn't happy. Maybe she was downright furious.

But she wouldn't let him know it.

Oh no.

She wouldn't let him have the gratification of seeing her squirm or spit fire.

That in mind, Raven placed both hands on the finely crafted door handles—made of what must have been gold, though Raven had never seen gold that she could remember—and opened them with the measured grace of the Queens she knew she wasn't.

"You came," he said as soon as he laid eyes on her. What he didn't say was: that's...unexpected.

He thought it, yes. But he did not say it.

Pride was a curiously dividing similarity between them.

"I said that I would, did I not?" she replied imperiously and he gave a short nod before walking the few steps up to meet her and offer her his arm.

And they were back to distant courtesies, it seemed.

She accepted.

He led her to one end of an elaborately set table where a chair—a throne, she thought absently but thought no more on the subject—made of cherry wood and covered in midnight shaded velvet sat. Pulling it out, he gestured for her to sit, which she did after a pause born of her tendency to be offended by politeness rather than gratified for it.

"Thank you," she said even as he made his own way to the opposite end of the table where he sat on a chair of the exact same make hers was. Her eyes surveyed the cabaret of silverware with some anxiousness. There were so many...

"You're welcome," he said, the phrase echoing uncomfortably across the many trays and platters and so on. "Whatever you wish, it's yours." And now he sat, hands folded on top of one another in an expectant fashion, gaze distinctly on the dark girl facing him and it was only a few awkward minutes later that Raven realized he must be waiting for her to start.

She started.

Eventually she even relaxed.

Her dinner companion kept his peace because they both seemed to have come to an unspoken agreement that if they didn't want a fight that involved flying forks and the like, their best conversations would be of the silent nature. And the food was very good, very. Some dishes Raven recognized even if she couldn't put a name to them and others were delightfully new, spiced to a point that made her eyes water but savory enough to take another bite. By the time dessert came around she'd realized how hungry she truly was and had given in to simply eating her fill—she might as well, she reasoned. Perhaps she could eat this man out of house and home and then go back to hers.

There have been less likely escape plans, she mused, slightly entertained by the very idea of running out of anything in this castle that seemed to define the words 'vast' and 'endless' with capitals.

"Why thank you," she smiled lightly at the teapot as it finished pouring some tea when all the main courses and sweets had been cleared away. To her fast diminishing surprise, it seemed to bob at her, its lid doing a fantastic imitation of a man tipping his hat. She suspected it, even, of chattering vaguely at her, but it was muddled and all she really made out was the rattle of its metal and eventually she gave up trying to decipher it and moved to politely sip at her tea instead.

The teapot at least did not seem offended and made an impressive leap onto the side cart which quickly sped away in the direction of what Raven assumed must probably be the kitchen.

"Your dishware is very courteous," she remarked and though his face remained impassive, she thought she heard a tone of interest that resembled her own in his voice when he next spoke.

"Everything here is very proud of how well it can do its job," he said as one who is trying to not sound too cheerful, but feeling rather sunny regardless.

"You are in better spirits." She read him like a book anyway.

"As are you," he replied quickly.

"You aren't going to apologize are you?" she inquired with the tone of someone who is very tired.

At least it was a change from the irritability she'd generally endorsed so far.

"You weren't," he pointed out. She graced him with a humorless nod and they gazed at each other momentarily.

"This is stupid," she stated, setting her teacup down with extra force and she thought its clinking sound resembled a slight and indignant protest at the treatment. Blue met amethyst in a battle of variously sized question marks but he said nothing and she went on to explain, thinking: well, he should very well have said something if he wanted me to shut up and since hasn't, I'll say what I like...I think I might say what I like regardless. "You must have some name." At this he rolled his eyes like a drunk man who was being told he'd had too much. He wasn't of course...drunk that is.

"I have told you the truth, Beauty. I have no name to speak of," he paused and considered her in an almost meditative manner, the fire crackling beside them the only white noise to shroud his scrutiny. And it didn't, not much anyway, but Raven diverted her stare to the flames to help it along. She knew she thought better when people did not look at her. Maybe it was the same with him.

We do blow hot and cold, she thought absently, in no way disillusioned by the almost pleasant atmosphere they'd concocted over dinner. She well knew their tempers now, a quick and apt judge of character and circumstance, as well as their practically lethal attachments to pride and so on.

Funny, she'd never before met someone who could match her for temper or pride...

"Unless you wish to give me one," he said and his hands were a resting place for his finely chiseled chin, fingers interlaced in a thoughtful manner.

"You are not teasing?" she all but accused and she swore his eyes lost their dark veil.

It was only a second, a mere flash of humor, like the first light of sun in the morning that blinds you, but she'd seen it and stored it away in her heart to remind her he could find humor in things after all.

"I do not tease," he replied and his voice was stoic even if the look she had just discerned had been otherwise.

It was her turn to consider and she sipped her tea an uncounted number of times before answering. She had an answer before she spoke, minutes before, but she waited until she felt the edges of his impatience, and curious, explored it subtly. Almost it was like she could feel his own emotions wrapped tightly around hers to a point where she nearly felt impatient with herself.

How odd, she mused and eyed him speculatively as she spoke with a smile found entirely in her eyes, and only if one was paying attention.

He was.

"Well?" he prompted, vaguely unsettled by how long she was taking to say anything.

"Robin," she said and it was his turn to frown.

"What?" It seemed too simple a phrase for such a fine man.

"Robin, I shall call you that," she said, clarifying. It may not be his real name, but Hell's teeth! I can't call him 'you. She barely repressed a smirk at the thought and mused also: it would not be much different from me using 'Beauty', a sort of alias.

"But, why?" he asked, clearly a mixture of dissatisfaction and—to Raven's amusement—indignation.

"In the rose garden I found a robin and you called him away from me. You will be my Robin now," she explained. In fact, she explained it in such a matter-of-fact way that she did not read into her own words. As such, she did not understand the look that came over 'Robin'.

But he read the words for what she meant them as and what they might mean and his eyes seemed ablaze with starlight, and flecked with silver sparks.

He smiled. _'You will be my Robin...'_ Her phrasing echoed hauntingly in his mind, pouring life into his long cold heart. And he knew, knew that the young girl standing before him could not possibly know what that meant to him, for him. But he did—he knew—and it was this kind of knowing that was the reason for that smile. It was not a very big smile—though Raven admitted to herself it made him even handsomer, almost regal. It was not a very long smile—it was gone almost as soon as it came. But it was definitely a smile.

Raven returned it about thirty-percent.

"Very well, I am Robin then it seems," he said and they lapsed back into a far more comfortable quiet, laced with the laughter of the fire.

Fire does not laugh, Raven thought stubbornly but when she looked at it again she saw what might have been a smile and so she looked quickly away again.

There were some things she simply wasn't ready for.

Living fire is definitely one of them, she decided firmly and glued her eyes hurriedly to her empty teacup.

"You are bothered by the life here," he observed and she started involuntarily. A minute, and then she sent Robin a distinctly exasperated frown.

"I understand your 'seeing', but...well, no, that is wrong. I do not understand it at all, but I accept it—mostly—and that's more than you could expect from most people I might add. But in not understanding, I'd appreciate it a great deal if you would at least phrase such...observations like questions," she finished with a long sigh.

"Very well," he said, not too fast, not too slow.

"Thank you," she said.

A pause passed and it might have been seconds or hours, but Raven was fast losing any sense of time at all in this place.

"You may—" Robin stopped short and quickly rephrased, "Would you like to retire for the night?" There, that wasn't so hard, was it, the half-full wine glass at his right hand seemed to say, its contents swirling almost imperceptibly. He ignored it as he'd grown used to doing in such situations and simply placed all his attentions on his dinner guest.

She did not answer and he realized she seemed to have flown off in her own little world. That worried him. Such ventures did not work the same here in the castle or on its grounds as they worked outside of it; sometimes they were even dangerous.

"Beauty?" he called, a little more emphatically, and now she snapped to the present from wherever else she'd been, looking terribly lost and he felt pity well up in him, for all that this truly wasn't his fault. Robin had not lied about anything, least of all that; it was a binding contract and curse this part of the wood had been entwined with for longer than he could remember and it had been that that had trapped Raven…but still...

"I-I apologize," she mumbled with an uncharacteristic demureness.

He missed her fire.

"Go rest, Beauty. It has been a long day."

Understatement of the year, her mind chortled at her, but she brushed the wryness aside, tired even of her own ability to make sarcastic light of every conceivable situation, wanting only to do as he instructed.

I am so very tired, she realized dully and stood to leave for her room, wherein she paused at the door, a question hanging unsaid between her turned back and Robin's watchful stare.

"It will bring you to your quarters, as it will always bring you to me...or me to you, should you wish it," he said with new gentleness but Raven was overcome with exhaustion now, barely able to keep her mind conscious and she did not note the unusual care with which Robin now spoke.

And he knew she did not know, but said nothing.

She had given him some hope tonight, even as he watched her exit, door clicking shut behind her. Such a meek noise for such a grand fixture, Robin thought critically and the door's hinges reacted by squeaking unhappily at him. He would have laughed if he laughed anymore, but he didn't so he simply shook his head.

Hope, it'd been a while since he'd even dared to remember such a thing existed.

Robin, he pondered his new 'name' she'd given him so pragmatically and stated so prophetically—without knowing it of course.

Raven did a lot of things that meant more than she knew.

You will notice someday, Robin thought with the faintest touch of the hope she'd given him without meaning to, and then allowed himself to get lost in the amuses smiles of the flickering flames.

Meanwhile, Raven found herself outside the room with the name 'Beauty' scrawled on its nameplate and leaned against the door heavily.

"This is very strange," she murmured rather incoherently and probably gave a sound of startled unsettlement when she fell into her room, door giving way beneath her as if someone had opened it for her.

And here something as strange as she'd just noted everything to be happened.

Her eyes closed entirely as she yielded to the tiredness that had been threatening her deeply all the way from the dining hall and she felt certain she'd hit the floor, but didn't mind because as she recalled, it was carpeted and would not be so hard to sleep on...

"Poor girl," she thought she heard Roy say.

"Why didn't _you_ catch her?" a voice she did not recognize asked with an undue amount of annoyance.

"I find it difficult," Roy replied wryly and the other voice snorted dismissively.

"Oh you could do it. You just wanted to make me get a closer look."

The half-conscious girl in his arms didn't know quite what to make of that statement.

"No, I couldn't, but it hardly matters. I see you've got her."

Raven was very, very vaguely aware of the pair of arms cradling her like a child.

"Move over; I want to lay her down. Look at her, she's in pieces," the unidentified person said disdainfully, like someone who referred to something very distasteful, and even in the clawed grips of exhaustion, Raven felt something boil up in her at being referred to as gone to 'pieces'.

She stirred a little.

"I think she is insulted," Roy noted cheerily.

"She would be," the other voice replied sourly and Roy laughed.

"Don't be that way X," Roy said. "You'll like her, yes, even you. She'll be the one, just wait and see."

"Not like I have much choice," the one called X responded crossly, but tucked in the girl called 'Beauty' with some grudging care. "It's times like these I actually miss the others. They'd be much better at this than you or I."

"Maybe, but I don't think she'd get along with them too well; she doesn't seem a typical kind of girl," Roy remarked.

"That may yet be to our advantage," X admitted and leaned against one of the bedposts, eyeing Raven a little less like a burden now.

"It will have to be," Roy said with more seriousness than Raven had heard him use up until the present.

And that was finally the last thing she heard before unconsciousness crashed down entirely around her in many curtained waves of soundlessness.

* * *

There's Chapter Four. Review please. Thank you!

-Rei


	5. V : Mischief

Thank you for the reviews! Tell me your thoughts on this chapter, please.

-Rei

Dedicated to all who read and review but most especially: The Writer you Fools, Alena-chan, Cherry Jade and my dear castle in the air

* * *

_Glass_

_Chapter Five: Mischief_

* * *

She felt the edges of sleep crawl off of her like waves parting and her first thought was that she did not remember falling asleep. 

"You look dead when you sleep."

She jumped, getting further tangled in the sheets and stared at the young man standing nonchalantly across from her, leaning on the elegant mahogany wardrobe-chest.

"You...you are...who _are_ you?" Her words stumbled, or she stumbled over her words—she wasn't certain which—and she added with new fire when he did not answer her, "Well, whoever you are, you're very rude!"

"The truth is not always _pretty_," the young man said, not intending the double meaning that carried through.

"I already know I do not suit my nickname," Raven said coldly, trying to hide the sting that last comment had inflicted, much as she hated to admit it.

"I never said that, lady," he sighed like someone who was tired of trying to explain that red was red because it was red and for no other simpler or more intricate reason than that.

"What is it with the creatures here?" She balled her fists in the sheets, irritated. "Either I am a child to you who cannot know anything useful and must settle for half-heard conversations on the verge of a dreamless sleep or I am a lady who is no more enabled to understand but distanced with terribly pretend politeness!" Her words ended in a rushed and very vexed escalation.

But all the man said, the disinterested look on his face never leaving, was, "Creatures?"

She groaned and threw one pillow at him before pulling the covers over her head. At least there were no chores for her to do here. Then again maybe it'd be better if there were. She feared she might go mad with only this increasingly obnoxious new guest to keep her 'entertained'. Speedy—Roy, she amended shortly—seemed to have disappeared entirely.

Not surprising, her mind chuckled and she drew the blankets over her tighter.

The day was too harsh with these magical curiosities.

"Oh stop," the man said and now she recognized it as the voice of the man Roy had called 'X' the other night. It helped that she had her eyes covered as it simulated her first encounter with his existence, triggering her memory. "At least get up and have breakfast. Mr. Fast and not so furious will probably throw a great fit if I don't get you out of bed soon," X intoned unhappily, as one resigned to his duty.

"No," she replied, her voice muffled by the cloth. X scowled and pulled the covers off of her roughly.

"Just come and eat; it's right over here," he gestured to the small table set for her and she sniffed, almost involuntarily. Herbal tea.

She wondered how they knew and then stopped wondering as she padded wordlessly over to the little stand, white table-cloth making it a pristine picture against the reddish brown wood and dark blue cloths of the room.

"Do you...want anything?" she asked uncertainly and X shook his head.

"I have no need of such things. You could call it the perks of an otherwise damnable plight," he said and here offered a crooked smile.

"Why does he hold you here?" she asked, assuming.

"He doesn't. The castle though..." he trailed off, eyes falling to the small butter knife at the side of her plate of white toast.

"It is a magic castle then?" she probed further.

"Of course," X said a little testily and she laughed.

"Where's Roy?" she inquired now and sipped at her tea, eyeing her new acquaintance with more than a little amusement as he shifted restlessly in place.

"Out," X said and she glared.

"You are not nearly so helpful nor...cheerful as your fleet of foot friend," she commented.

"You do not seem the type to care much about cheer," X retorted pointedly and Raven seemed to think on his statement.

"Fair enough," she admitted finally, tired of arguing with the ceaselessly unbothered character before her.

"I think it only fair to warn you. There are places you should not go here," X began.

"He promised me safety," she interrupted. X scowled.

"Promises are not ever without loopholes, lady. You'd do well to remember that. Now if you're going to interrupt me every time I try to actually be helpful, I think I'll just leave and ignore all of Roy's resulting tantrums," he said, impatient and irritated.

"Fine," she said shortly and he snorted at her less than amiable response, but continued.

"These places are as follows: the roses you found first, stay away from them. They got you caught here and that is not the least of their dangers. Second, the keeper's corridor off to the northeast area of the castle, that too you should avoid. That is where he goes when..." X trailed off. "When he is less pleasant," he decided upon and left it at that. Raven stared at him. Was she really just supposed to nod and behave like a five year-old?

Well now, her mind chided, you did no such thing when you were five...or any other age.

She smiled.

So maybe she'd never been the most obedient child...she couldn't help herself really, sometimes.

"Alright," she said though and X didn't miss the wavering tone, but disregarded it. If she was to disobey, she was to disobey and secretly, X thought maybe some rebellious tones in the household would offset the stagnant state of things.

Almost, he wanted her to go.

Then maybe...

A clang stopped his train of thought and he snapped back to find Raven picking up the small knife she'd accidentally knocked off the table.

"Sorry," she half-smiled. X exhaled loudly.

"I don't care."

"No, I don't suspect you do," Raven said peaceably and X found, her agreeable nature got under his skin more than her contrarian one—if possible.

"I'm leaving now," he announced without grandeur or importance, just as a notation.

She waved.

He scowled and exited the room.

"That was a bit easier than I'd expected," Raven said to the now empty room and the curtains around her bed lifted a little with an inexplicable breeze as if in reply. "He can't stand a cheery disposition. That much is obvious," she explained to no one in particular and pushed her chair away from her breakfast table, standing and stretching.

Dubiously she gave herself a once over—or as much of a once over as one could manage without a mirror—and approached the wooden dresser. She did not remember putting her only other change of clothes away but upon not finding them anywhere in the room, she imagined they might have been put away for her. It would not have been surprising, in any case.

What was surprising was the extravagant array of clothing she did find in the dressing chest's main compartments.

Gowns heavily embroidered with pearls and jewels, some brocade, others silk that looked almost like gossamer, rich velvet all edged in filigreed golds and silvers, and in the bottom drawers shoes that seemed to match.

But none were things Raven wished to wear and she frowned at this.

"Well it's all good and fine if it's a Duchess or a Princess or an Empress that you're planning on decking out here, but it's just me," she told the dresser in a very, very no-nonsense voice and shut the doors emphatically.

She waited. Now, if her theory played out, the whole of the castle was enchanted, so maybe even its furnishings...

The wardrobe began to shake, almost like it was going to dissimilate...a seizure-like motion, but stopped shortly and holding her breath, Raven opened it again.

"That's better," she grinned and picked out her clothes for the day.

It was a couple hours later when she emerged from her room. Upon leaving she cast the nametag—still reading 'Beauty'—an annoyed look as though to say: change, you.

But that was one wish this magic castle seemed disinclined to grant, so she sighed and walked down the very long, very grand corridor. It was the first time she had actually walked the hall in the hours of daylight and now the sun filtered prettily through the ceiling-high, arched windows, all crossed with ebony panes. The carpet beneath her knee-high boots was a soft blue velvet and cushioned her footfalls, making her presence almost perfectly silent, but for her breathing.

Knee-high boots...Raven's face broke into the kind of grin one makes to one's self when one is particularly amused with an inside joke, and she chuckled a little. In addition to the unorthodox footwear—well, unorthodox for a girl anyway—she had on black breeches and a long billowing shirt the color of indigo. She wore no sash or belt but felt it was hardly necessary to have all the proper outfitting of a man; she wasn't one after all. She just thought their clothes were a great deal more sensible.

This sentiment was not new. Raven had probably felt this way since the moment she could easily identify the evident differences between cumbersome skirts and motion-friendly pants or the like—since age six or so. Her sisters had been able to dissuade her from it all her life though, insistent as they were—Raven was insistent as well of course, but there were two of them and one of her, so in the end they always won out and Raven always ended up with a death glare plastered firmly on her face, skirts pooling at her ankles.

But now she didn't have them here to tell her no or why not—Raven's eyes softened at the remembrance of what she no longer had and she steeled her heart against what she saw as weakness—and so she wore the clothes the magic dresser provided her, according, it seemed, to her very whim.

The only remotely feminine thing she wore now was a single piece of jewelry and now Raven had lost any real sense of where she was and it seemed to her this corridor might go on forever if she didn't ask it for a specific place but she became distracted when the sun hit the glass-like rose on her right ring finger and so she continued walking to nowhere in particular as her thoughts lapsed for the hundred-millionth time on something she did not understand.

Absently, she twisted the ring, but did not take it off.

She hadn't removed it even once since it had mysteriously appeared there, somehow knowing that to do so would probably be cause for some very bad things to happen and she wasn't in the mood for any more of that quite yet. So the ring stayed, glimmering in the light as it refracted and caught in the crystalline facets, seeming far warmer than its brother and sister roses she had encountered in the wood.

"I think I'm growing attached to you," she remarked to the rose and it winked back at her, but that was just the light probably, moving as she walked.

Just the light.

Raven stopped walking and glanced at the ever-continuing hallway.

"This is ridiculous. I don't even know where I could go, much less where I want to go!"

"I believe you enjoy reading," a familiar voice intoned and she jumped an impressive height, startled.

"Ye Gods and little fishes!" she exclaimed, heart dropping into her stomach and returning all in the space of a few seconds. She suspected him of holding back a smirk and exhaled sharply. "Don't _do_ that!" she all but scolded the approaching Robin.

"I apologize," he said, tone never changing.

"Yes, well..." she petered off.

"Books, I asked if you liked them," he reminded her, moving an arm that made his cape—the same one from yesterday, the same rose red—flicker out a bit. She nodded. "I have a library if you wish to see it?" he inquired and she looked behind her. What for, she wasn't certain, but it helped to get a break from Robin and his incessantly intense scrutiny. She wondered wryly if he practiced making people uncomfortable with his gaze.

"Yes, please," she said finally and he opened a door to their left that Raven had not even noticed before his arrival.

Raven thought she knew what "a lot of books" was.

Upon entering his "library" she decided she probably hadn't before, but now most definitely did.

Stacks, piles, shelves...it wasn't the most organized of rooms, not in the least the elegant paragon of alphabetized perfection she had expected, but there could be no doubting one thing: this was what "a lot of books" was.

"I don't believe it," she breathed. Robin arched a brow.

"In light of everything, it is my archives that hold you most astounded?" he asked.

"I am enchanted," she flashed him a grin that he couldn't help but return.

"So it would seem," he replied and made a motion to show she had freedom in this room of literary wonders.

"Do you have any favorites?" he inquired as she ran her fingers across the spines of many books, some worn, some seemingly very new, some somewhere in between.

"Fantasy," she answered and he nodded.

"I thought so," he said and she groaned.

"Don't think so much," she advised lightly, but in all seriousness, and he lost sight of her as she ducked down a veritable alleyway of piles of higher stacked books.

"You would rather I idled away then, Beauty?" he called out, occasionally hearing her rustle pages as she paused to thumb through one tome or another. He heard her snort.

"Tcha, maybe..."

Robin smiled. She was certainly different.

"What have you found there?" he inquired after the sound of her shuffling her feet leisurely through the mountains of books stopped.

"I am not sure," she replied, and, intrigued, the blue eyed man sought her out. She was perched on a smaller stack of bindings, a book open on her lap and she held in her forefinger and thumb a loose paper.

"What is it?" he asked again.

"I told you I'm not sure. It looks...like a spell..." she trailed off, feeling silly. "Or maybe a riddle," she amended, understanding this much better. "Can you tell? It is...it is not Mischief is it?"

To her surprise, he laughed.

"No, Beauty," he said. "Let me tell you there is a very distinct difference between Magic and Mischief. Mischief...it's like an animal, a beast if you will," he explained more casually than Raven had ever heard him. He settled down on another pile, perching across the way from her.

"How do you mean?" she asked, feeling uncomfortably unknowledgeable.

"Mischief will run rampant on its own, comes of...curses," and here his voice regained its usual tone of constant despondency. "Magic can be controlled, used to even do things like heal. It may have mischievous streaks, but Magic is for most essential purposes, a useful thing, and...though it has a life of its own too, it is far more human than the Mischief that has no discriminatory sense."

It was all a bit much for her to take in.

But she tried.

"Here, listen," she said at last, weary almost from trying to wrap her mind around all he'd just explained and she dusted the page off delicately so as not to tear it before reading the words in her clear, eloquent tones, voice reverberating oddly in the gargantuan library's core.

"_From the ground it came alive_

_Into the manor's way_

_A deceptive spell_

_An earthbound Hell_

_A rose in blood-red bloom_

_--- _

_Soon over the stones it slowly left_

_In every crack and crevice_

_A soulless sadness_

_And a mirthless madness_

_Acrimony with tiny black thorns_

_--- _

_And so the mischief, shadowlike_

_Coursed through the forgotten wood_

_Making eternal winter_

_For the eternal sinner_

_The eternal reminder of a wrong_

_--- _

_But even eternity settled imperfectly here_

_It was undeniably a double-edged curse_

_And so if a maker could make it_

_Reason said maybe a breaker could break it_

_As an end to man's endless fall."_

A wind whipped through, sending books scattering and pages flipping like mad, and Raven had to cover her eyes, so strong as it got. Strange chiming noises blared from the ground and the sky and the sides of the rooms and she swore the walls were screaming as creatures in great pain. Robin shouted something as the wind began to darken.

To blacken...like ebony.

"What?" she yelled, anxiously trying to find him, blind with the wind. He called again, still indistinguishable from the roaring calamity engulfing them both. Books were literally zinging from place to place with no sense of order and Raven ducked to avoid such flying missiles but one struck her near her temple.

She stumbled.

It hadn't been a very large book, but it still hurt and she groaned, rubbing her head slightly before tuning her senses to concentrate on Robin.

He had said she needed only to think of him to bring him to her...or vice versa...perhaps it would work now.

But the wind seemed to be keeping them from each other and now it was as a black, dense fog with knives slashing through it in hot white stings, mercilessly grating at everything and with a falling feeling, Raven could faintly hear some of the books' pages being torn.

"How do we make it stop?" she cried out, loud as she could.

By some miracle...or Magic, she heard him respond, though only barely:

"If it's a spell, there should be in that book, a ward or a counter-spell or something to keep it down for a while! Look for it!" he shouted, and she could feel his strain as she realized the only reason she could hear him was also because she could see him.

And he appeared to...to be pulling the black wind and mist apart...with his hands.

"My God," she gasped.

"Find it!" he demanded, voice constrained with tension. She hurried.

Where was it? It seemed to her the wind had knocked it all out of her grasp and in the sight-inhibiting storm all around it took her almost too long to find it but a small gold-brown corner peeked out from a newly messed pile and she snatched it up triumphantly.

"What should it look like?" she yelled, frantically thumbing through the pages with a care not to rip them.

"I don't know!" he shouted back and she rolled her eyes.

Great, she intoned mentally but kept looking.

Her eyes caught.

There was a tear where the riddle might have gone...and on the adjoining page were some words she'd never seen before.

"Robin!"

"What?" he forced out. She thought she could see him trembling as she felt the ground shake beneath her. The winds were getting angrier, stronger, louder….it felt like swords were whipping at all of her and she knew it must be worse for him.

"I think this might be it, but I...I do not know the words!" she cried, exasperated and frightened now in light of the pain etching itself into her captor's face. His flesh had paled to near deathly white—more ashen than she remembered her own skin being—and his eyes so blue and sky-like were glassy like someone on verge of death or oblivion.

I am frightened? Part of her marveled. Never before...

But for some reason the idea of this man, this stranger, slipping away to the Underworld did not sit right with her...made her heart lurch...

Made her cold.

But in the alarm of the whole situation, she quickly chalked it up to a humanitarian streak.

"Say them anyway!" He sounded like he was choking. His hands all furled up in the raging gale around them visibly shaking and taut with effort.

He is trying to protect me, she realized with both a rush of gratitude and perplexity.

"I..." she faltered.

"Raven!" he shouted, as his hands slipped and the wind seemed to barrel completely down on both of them.

It felt like she was being suffocated, like a vice had gripped her and was shattering her spine and crushing her lungs and compressing her mind. Something slashed her right arm and that same cutting sensation ripped across part of her collarbone area and a shoulder, the back of her neck...

Raven was vaguely aware of two things other than that: 1) Robin had called her Raven without her ever telling him her real name; and 2) when the razor-like force scratched across her nape, she felt the weight of her long hair...her hair that some people said was like her mother's...disappear.

And then she couldn't think about it anymore because it felt like something had just punched her in the stomach, causing her to collapse to her knees.

But it was for the better. The book she'd dropped again, the one with the theoretical anti-curse or whatever the Hell it was for the chaos around them that threatened death with every savage howl it unleashed upon the two separated birds...it was there.

The vice feeling tightened and Raven thought her chest might burst with the compression, thought she might pass out...

"Azarath, metrion, zinthos." She felt the words tumble out of her mouth more than she heard herself say them, but it wasn't as foreign as she'd thought.

In fact, they came out oddly...comfortably. The winds seemed to recede...a bit.

"Azarath, metrion, zinthos," she repeated, more firmly, fingers clutching the edges of the book to keep her consciousness straight long enough to keep focusing on the words.

The darkness seemed to dim a bit...she could make out the slumped form of a caped figure a way's away from her...

Robin.

A screeching howl brought her back and, mustering all that was left of her strength, Raven summoned her most powerful emotion so far here: anger...rage.

Rage of her own to match the rage of the unnatural storm around her and her Robin.

Her Robin?

Raven's mind blurred.

She managed to stand, storm still all about her, book in hands.

"You do not belong here!" she cried out, doing her best to sound as if she knew what she spoke of. "You are not welcome!" she yelled, and she felt a strange fiery sensation behind her eyes...almost it burned, but it was not unpleasant and it distracted her from the gashes being inflicted on her now by invisible blades of air, rending her clothes, making red marks on her skin.

Faintly, she recognized the sensation at last: it was like many pieces of...no, shards of glass digging into her...tiny, tiny fragments of crystal-clear glass...thorns...

"Ah!" she cried out as one 'thorn' scraped the center of her forehead. She lifted a hand gingerly to touch it and brought it back to find, as expected, a small patch of blood on her fingers.

The winds seemed to scream back at her and Raven inhaled shakily.

Maybe if she said the words again...

"Azarath..." The winds beat as wildly as war drums gone awry.

"...metrion..." The black tendrils of the insane war of supernatural cause grabbed hold of her wrists making her drop the book, and one wrapped around her throat.

But she remembered the last word almost as if she'd known it before she even read them there. She didn't need the fallen tome. And Raven, not knowing why, but knowing she had to, shouted with extra power, with extra everything that was alien and bubbling in her anger now: "ZINTHOS!"

The winds and darkness all merged and she felt herself hit the ground, noting vaguely how nice and cool the motionlessness of the marble tiling felt, how calm it was...how quiet.

But nothing after that.

* * *

Review please. I'm not sure if people are losing interest or not, haha, but some of you seem to still like it and for that I am very glad. Thank you so much. 

-Rei


	6. VI : Magic

Dedicated to alena-chan, Cherry Jade, The Writer you Fools, and my dear castle in the air …my dear castle in the air who I HOPE updates soon...hint, hint.

-Rei

Thanks for waiting for this chapter! Let me know what you think please!

* * *

_Glass_

_Chapter Six: Magic_

* * *

Pain. 

That was her first sensation.

Fear.

That was her first feeling.

Confusion.

That was what was left.

Raven groaned softly and opened her eyes, sleep crusting at the edges as though she'd been dormant for many, many hours. The cold of the marble floor reminded her of what had just transpired and her eyes widened as she pulled herself to a sitting position, all of her body screaming in protest.

She looked around, looked for one particular someone...

"No," she breathed, voice cracking.

Robin lay where she had suspected she saw him right before the darkness claimed her, lay right as she remembered him...and twice as still. She tried to get up, but her knees buckled immediately and she realized she not only felt like she'd just run a particularly brutal gauntlet, but that she also felt insanely weak.

"I am like an invalid," she said angrily, looking at the marks on her skin. They weren't just ordinary scratches, on closer inspection, but...symbols?

Raven frowned and rubbed her forehead, befuddled and irritated with it.

But it didn't stop there. She'd nearly forgotten the slash on her forehead. Now as she accidentally brushed over the 'cut' with her hand, she flinched.

That was not just a scar.

Gingerly she brought her index and middle fingers up to slowly, apprehensively outline the small shape. It was harder than skin...more like glass...

Her eyes fell back upon Robin now though and her hand dropped as she began to use both her arms to drag herself across the wide floor, pushing the many scattered books out of her way until at last she reached the caped man. With difficulty she turned him over.

Raven's heart clenched.

His face was sheet-white and the black of his lashes seemed like death in the way the small curves refused to even hint at the opening of the blue eyes beneath them. Like Raven, he had sustained multiple gashes and there was some dried blood here, there, and everywhere around the rips in his clothes.

"Robin?" she asked as gently as possible.

Nothing.

She couldn't even see the rise and fall of his chest.

"Robin, be brave now. You are master here. None can harm you, surely," Raven did the closest thing she might ever do to babbling and then sighed.

Fearing the worst, she slowly lowered her ear to his chest, right hand resting under his head for support as she'd somehow been able to get him to lie across her lap.

"Thank...I don't know...but thank you," Raven whispered as she discerned the slightest of uneven breaths she could fathom. "But you can't stay like this," she said to his motionless form and then with a sort of wry smile, "_I _can't stay like this."

_This is an enchanted castle_, her mind prodded at her and with a shudder, Raven nodded to herself. She remembered.

There was a second of a flash on black howling wind and sharp tiny thorns of glass and Robin waning...

But then it was gone and Raven focused wholly on the one thing they both really needed now, whether they liked it or not.

_Help_.

"Somebody? Please, the...master of this place is gravely injured! He needs help!" she cried out, the only apparent response being her own voice echoing back at her as if to remind her of how alone they were_. I need help too_, she thought briefly with a bit of humor, but pushed it aside. Robin was still not moving.

The door creaked and she turned her head.

Roy and...X…

And some other person she'd never seen before.

"What happened here?" X demanded, anger beating off of him like noonday sun.

"It wasn't my fault!" Raven replied, equally irate.

"I suppose it was the almost dead body in your lap that had the foolishness to say the invocation out loud!" X shot back with deadly sarcasm. Raven, for all her boldness, wilted at this statement.

"Invocation?" she asked weakly.

"Child," X spat with contempt and moved over to her.

"X, be reasonable," Roy admonished. "She couldn't have known." Here he slipped Raven a secretive smile and she took comfort in his defense of her, much as she herself was now unable to believe in it.

Was it her fault?

Her eyes clung to Robin's every scrape, scratch, gash and bruise with new fear.

Did I? Her thoughts spun wildly as the unidentified third party spoke up.

"And either way it's no use to any of us, that attitude of yours," he—the person Raven had yet to be introduced to— reprimanded and X glowered but stayed quiet. Sitting on the floor still with Robin across her lap, Raven thought there was something inexplicably familiar about the combination of constant irritation and smugness on the new person's face. She continued thinking this as the person crossed his arms and added, "Besides it shook something in the castle loose. Finally got out of that damn fireplace..."

Raven blinked and remembered her vision the other night at dinner as she looked in the fireplace to distract herself: the smile in the flames.

"That was _you_?" she asked. The young man nodded. His hair was like flame and even his eyes were two small fires that unsettled Raven greatly and so like when she had looked at the fireplace, she now looked away.

"Hotspot," he introduced himself and she nodded, only half aware of how ludicrously these people named themselves—Speedy, X, Hotspot?

Well, they're not much sillier than 'Beauty' she told herself and that ended that.

"Nice, glad we all know each other. Now let's get him fixed up before he's _all_ gone," X said, edgy. Roy had the gall or the better humor to laugh at the perturbed man.

"You're such a grouch," Speedy teased and X, proving the statement, only grumbled something with a scowl in response.

"Here, let me take him," Hotspot knelt to pick up Robin and though Raven was suddenly loathe to release his custody to another, she let him. He needed help. Thus uninhibited, Raven also tried to stand again, but with the same results as before found herself on the floor again.

"Get her, X," Roy/Speedy ordered cheerily as he sped after Hotspot, already exiting the library. X slapped a hand to his forehead.

"Those jerks," he muttered and eyed Raven who eyed him right back, a similar set to her jaw that said: well, I don't much like it either. Deal with it!

"Why do they call you X?" she asked as he scooped her into his arms. X rolled his eyes.

"It's my name," he said shortly. Raven twisted in his arms. "Hey, quit that!" he said, startled out of his stoic gloominess as she rearranged herself in his arms so she could properly look at the insufferable man.

"I thought Robin was testy but you take the cake," she said and X snorted.

"I hate cake."

"Somehow, I would've guessed," Raven said, amused, and X looked as if he might say something in response to that but stopped short.

"What is that?" he nodded at her forehead. Raven paled.

"Not sure," she said and moved her gaze to the floor where she was in no danger of meeting X's inscrutable staring.

"I see," he said, and she really thought he rather did, even if she had no idea what he meant by it.

Somehow, X managed to get Raven to her room without one of them killing the other...a feat, to be sure.

Granted, neither wore looks of cheer by the time they did get there, but this was to be expected and as X kicked the door open—it seemed to protest with a loud squeak of its hinges—Raven mumbled something incoherent.

"What?" X asked, sitting her on the edge of her bed.

"I said thanks," Raven said and X arched a brow.

"You're welcome. Now sit still," he ordered as he went fishing around in a room Raven hadn't even noticed, and came back out bearing a large basin, some white cloth and other such things. Disappearing back into the same room, he came back once more with a rather large kettle and Raven tilted her head to one side as he poured it into the white basin's center.

"What are you doing and where did you get all that?" she inquired.

"I got it from that room over there you've miraculously failed to explore so far and I'm going to clean you up a bit," X explained as one thoroughly tortured. Raven frowned.

"Might I not do it myself?" she suggested.

"You're a child," X simply said and without asking took her right hand in his and began to pour over it, using one cloth to wipe the crusted blood away and another to wash and then another to wrap it softly.

Surprisingly, he was gentle.

"There are no women folk here," Raven said, uncomfortable with a silence she would normally not even notice.

"Not anymore," X said and Raven simply made a 'hm' noise. "They...disappeared with the curse." Raven sent him an inquiring glance but he said no more and something told her no amount of badgering was about to change that, so she too kept her silence as he continued to clean her multitude of cuts. "These will probably scar," he intoned as one making a completely detached observation.

"I don't think so," she said automatically and it was X's turn to shoot her questions with a tilt of his head.

"What makes you say that?" he asked slowly.

"I don't know," Raven said simply and looked down at her feet to avoid further inquiries. X frowned but didn't press it. Suspicions could be determined later, he told himself as he paused in his ministrations.

"Turn around," X ordered. Amethyst eyes flared a bit.

"What?"

"Your back has a lot of the same markings—cuts, I mean," X said with uncharacteristic haste, only furthering Raven's apprehension.

"Markings?"

"Turn around," X said plainly.

"You can hardly even get at it as it is." Raven tugged pointedly at the remains of her shirt, badly torn but still mostly covering. X shrugged.

"Just turn and slip it down far enough for me to clean the cuts."

There was a distinctly awkward silence.

Well, it was not as awkward for X as it was for Raven who had the sneaking misgiving that X didn't even compute the sheer audacity and inappropriateness of his most recent suggestion.

"Absolutely not," she said flatly. X groaned.

"If they get infected—" he began.

"I'll be fine," Raven said with an inarguable glint to her stare. X rolled his own eyes and would have argued further on what he saw as her lack of sensibility but the doors to Raven's room burst open with amazing speed and force.

"Speedy," X greeted without cheer.

"Beauty," Roy/Speedy turned to Raven. She flinched as if she'd been hit.

That was it, nametag on the door or not, enough was enough.

"Raven," she corrected him and his confused look reminded her of how little her new friends knew of her. "My name is Raven, please," she said more clearly.

"Raven," he tested her name out and then remembering suddenly his purpose, went to her side. "We need your help...I think."

He _thinks_ he needs _my_ help? What kind of a statement is that? Raven frowned, puzzled.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The keeper, he's...we think he's..._dying_," the nearly invisible man said as if the words were foreign to him, as though they tasted bitter on his tongue. Raven felt her heart stop for a beat.

One beat, no more.

But it stopped.

"Robin?" she asked dumbly and then said hurriedly, "He _can't_ die!"

"He's not _supposed_ to be able to," X agreed, anger seeping around the edges of his own evident confusion.

"I know!" Roy threw his hands in the air. "But it looks like he is, whatever the reason. Raven, you have to come, please," he asked again. She shook her head wildly.

And she knew there was a truth in that some part of her wanted to run to Robin's side.

But there was a more omniscient knowledge in her that there was some other part of her that just wanted to run.

"_I_ can't do anything!" she cried, alarmed at her voice breaking.

"You don't know that," X said, bringing back into sharp focus for Raven her suspicions that the unsociable man knew more than he would let on. "If Roy says it looks like the keeper is dying, he must be dying and that shouldn't be possible, but it's happening. You may be able to do more than you could possibly know and you have to..." he broke off, looking pained for a second before continuing, "...to trust us."

Raven stared, flabbergasted. "But..." she trailed off, numb with the renewed strangeness of everything.

"It might very well have been your fault that this happened in the first place!" X snapped and Raven recoiled.

Was it? She wondered a second time. The look of anguish translated clearly and Roy floated forward protectively.

"Now X, come on. You know it was probably an accident," Roy argued, trying to be reasonable—for once.

"Your full of it!" X shot back, unfeeling.

"X..." Roy's voice took on warning as Raven's expression fell even more.

For some reason, her heart failed her at the thought that she might be the cause for Robin's injury.

Slowly she raised her eyes to meet X's stare. It was impenetrable, as always, slight tilt of a sardonic smile he didn't mean a constant shield for whatever he was really thinking, and her gaze fell as quickly as it had risen.

Minutes must have passed, minutes that seemed like forever.

And then something she least expected happened.

A sigh, and then... "Please."

"Please at least _try_." X said with no more feeling than anything else, but the word was symbolic of more than inflection.

"Take me to him," Raven said after a moment's dreadful quiet and X hurriedly rushed her out of the room, down the grand, endless halls until there were so many turns and twists that she felt lost again.

"Here," X snapped her out of her garbled awareness and Raven stepped into a room with doors all gilded in gold.

Her first sense was that it was dark...darker than any other place in the castle she'd seen. Strangely enough, her eyes seemed to adapt with a rapidity she usually did not have and she scoured the room for a certain black-haired man...

"Over here," a familiar voice called. Hotspot. Even he looked worried.

"What's wrong with him?" Raven asked, knowing it was a pointless question but finding need for some pointlessness to take up the space while she gathered her wits about her. Robin lay on a bed, clothes turn much like her own, but worse, little left of his shirt and the cape was nothing but shreds of midnight. His skin was as pale as she recalled it being before she had passed out before...paler even, and his breath...

She lowered her ear to his chest gently.

Barely there.

"What can be done?" she asked Hotspot. The man shook his head.

"I know less than most here, just that he's in trouble and none of us can call him back," he said and Raven surprised herself by not jumping when the man's eyes burst into red flames.

"Angry?" she asked weakly. His eyes smoldered.

"Apologies, miss," he said and turned to leave the room.

"Wait! What should I do? Where are you going?" Raven exclaimed, distressed even as she knelt on her knees at the side of the bed, eyes never leaving her Robin.

There was that phrase again, that thrice dratted phrase...her Robin.

What are you thinking? She pleaded with one of her many selves internally but quieted all of it as she heard the response:

"_Only you can help him. The prophecy shall be fulfilled." _

It was only when the door closed that she realized it hadn't been Hotspot who had answered her questions, but a whisper that seemed entirely present only in her head.

She shivered.

"Robin?" she looked at him, bleak with misgivings. He did not stir, not even a fluctuation in breath, which seemed also to be dying away swiftly. "Robin," she said a little more firmly and twisted her hands together before tentatively framing his face with her right hand. "You are not very old, but you seem as weighed down as time itself," she mused to the unconscious body. "And you are not a very mean Robin, even if you are horribly disagreeable sometimes," she admitted, as though talking to him might keep him hanging onto this world, keep him from going to the next.

And then she realized she couldn't feel his breathing anymore.

"Robin!" Her voice gained new worry, new fear, new calamity. She shook him with no resulting reaction and called louder, "Get up! Robin, please! Get up!" She was yelling now, and it occurred to her she was talking to an unconscious body but maybe her reason could reach him yet. So she kept talking, frantic, seemingly helpless, but always knowing she had to keep on trying.

"Tell me...tell me what it is that pains you, anything!" her voice broke with unexpected sadness at this verbal splurge and Raven's eyes widened as she realized she was trembling. "Robin, please, I can _feel_ you are still here...we are bonded. You are not gone...I do not think you want to be gone yet..." she trailed off, at a loss.

His skin seemed to be chilling beneath her hands and she now cupped his face with her right hand again as she lowered her face next to his, whispering in his ear as one might whisper the deepest, darkest secret of their life: "Behind that mask of yours…I can tell you're trying to be nice to me...that there's a soul somewhere, the one I'm connecting with. And I think also behind that mask, there's a boy, afraid of everything and nothing...but you don't need to be afraid anymore."

"Rae..." his lips barely moved and Raven's hold on him tightened a little, her body tense with the feeling one gets before one takes a leap without knowing how far it is to the other side, and when Robin did not stir again, when she thought she could positively see his life force dissolving, she said in a tone born of urgency:

"I can help you, but you have to _let_ me."

And then a warm flush carried through her body, coursing like rays of sun and she felt her hand—the one cradling Robin's face—heat up with what felt like light...what looked like light. She gasped in spite of herself as the white energy seemed to pour through her...and into Robin who came to with a choking breath of someone too long deprived of oxygen.

"Raven!" he gasped out and, more confident in what she did not understand than what she did, Raven nodded comfortingly as she could and brought her other hand to Robin's chest to push him gently back down onto the bed as light spread from that hand too until Robin was entirely aglow.

And, for an instant, he looked as transparent as glass.

Briefly, Raven thought he fairly glowed with light...illuminated...holy.

Then the warm feeling seemed to suck itself out of Raven with an abruptness that threw her off and the void that replaced it seemed wrought with a chilling ache in her chest. She inhaled sharply just as Robin ceased to glow and began to prop himself up on his elbows.

"You _healed_ me...you healed me with..._Magic_," he said, in wonder...in disbelief. Raven could barely nod in affirmation, a weakness coming over her in very sudden and very overwhelming waves. Not knowing she did, she swayed dangerously and just barely caught the look of deepest concern on Robin's face as she collapsed.

Robin gathered her into his lap and stroked her hair softly.

"I don't know...I don't know how I..." it was only a murmur and she couldn't finish, frail as she was now.

But she didn't have to.

"Don't know how you did it," Robin finished her thought, still caressing her and effectively lulling Raven to a much needed rest. He felt her shudder as her eyes fluttered to a close and he sighed. "I don't either actually...I guess there are some things we can't possibly know," he paused, finger now tracing Raven's jaw softly. "But I know when I've received a gift...so, thank you...Raven..." he smiled.

She stirred briefly in his arms as if to ask what for.

"For _believing_," he answered her unconscious question and her breathing evened out as she fell further into what looked like her own kind of healing slumber.

Peering through a slight opening in the door, X nodded approvingly with a grunt and Hotspot scratched his head while Roy's jaw unhinged about a foot and a half.

"Did you see all that?" Roy poked X in the chest fanatically.

"Ah! Yes, I did you imbecile, stop poking me," X scowled, batting Roy's hand away in exaggerated agitation. "We _knew_," he drawled, not a hint of his earlier worry showing now. Roy scoffed.

"Yeah right! You were just as concerned as me and Hotspot...we didn't _know_...we _guessed_," Roy said.

"Tcha," X said and closed the door to the room with a soft click, but only after casting one last furtive glance at the two mysterious birds inside of it.

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Thoughts? Comments? If so, review please. Always good to know what you readers think. 

Next chapter: robin and raven have a dialogue about saving people...there are a few more hints to the curse...and the incantation from before is brought back into focus...


	7. VII : Need

Thank you so much for all the reviews! They've seriously been making my day(s) since I'm sick again...blah. Anyways this chapter is short and I'm sorry but more soon I hope and the next chapter of 'Hush' should be out soon-ish too…with any luck. Ah.

Dedicated to alena-chan, Cherry Jade, The Writer you Fools, and my dear castle in the air …my dear castle in the air

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_Glass_

_Chapter Seven: Need_

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He brooded and it was as though winter had frozen over the manor anew. That was preposterous if only because winter never ceased long enough to come again and therefore be new, but the chill was unmistakable and after the keeper took Raven to her room he disappeared from the castle. For days his absence slowly became more and more prominent to Roy, X, and Hotspot and they knew well where Robin had gone and knew just as well that none of them could follow.

There was the difference between master of the castle and its facilitators. He had a certain degree of freedom they did not and at times like these exercised that freedom by seeking haven in the glass garden they all knew existed but had never seen.

He'd mentioned it once, or he must have for none could remember a time he did not know of its presence in the center of the bridging woodland. But for some reason none could remember either when he might have told them it was there or that that was where he went. Still, they knew.

So he must have told them...once.

His breath hung like morning fog and he could almost see it crystallize right before him, tiny sparkling fragments slowly forming thorns that began to grow on a curved stem and then lead to an unfurling slew of heart-shaped petals.

"You had no choice," he muttered and his anger caused a hairline fracture in the new flora, silver-white in the winter moonlight.

It'd been very fine of him to show Raven his gratitude, to let his difficult nature fall away however shortly but the fineness dimmed to him now as she lay in something of a healing coma, back in the castle. It had been very fine indeed, but now his actions and her mistaken actions culminated in a wilting mix of confounding messes and Robin ran an agitated hand through his black locks.

He could never tell her the truth.

She would never help him then.

No one would help the man who kept telling him or her that it was the wood when really it was he himself who had trapped her there after all.

But had he had a choice?

A howl whipped through the trees, causing his cape to billow around him magnificently, a dark and flickering shadow. He grimaced. The wood had a bad habit of reading him too well sometimes and its responses were not welcomed now, his heart growing hard in him at the thought of what might have happened if he had simply turned a blind eye to Raven's trespassing that night a while back.

Then she never would have come, never would have challenged his manner, never would have read the invocation. And he, Robin, would be no closer to ridding his castle and keep of the curse than he had been five hundred years before—even further perhaps, for how many maidens exactly did one expect to have run into the enchanted wood within a century of each other? The wood and castle's lands alike riddled themselves with small Magics, Mischiefs, and the like but like all things enchanted the magnitude of the one all-encompassing binding wrapped itself vice-like around him and his.

And they would still all lay relatively dormant if not for…her.

If he hadn't done what he told himself again he had to have done, even as he began to pace as he had for the past three days, in maddeningly short spans with contradictorily long strides, back and forth, back and forth, and never getting anywhere. So far she'd shown no signs of waking, not that anyone at the castle ever saw him return. He went back, undetected, only to watch the sleeping form of Raven for a time each night to make sure her situation became no graver than it was. He couldn't risk it.

After lying to her though, everything had become a risk and the line he felt himself walking was confusing even to himself. She called out the genuineness in him but he could not give of it wholly which was troublesome and she was smart which meant when she woke—and if she woke came to mind but he pushed it aside hastily, disheartened—she would be a force to contend with if he were to keep the truth from her still. Not that he had much choice, he told himself darkly and the crunch of the crusty snow beneath his boots was loud in his ears as he tried to keep thinking.

"She is too beautiful," he said to himself hopelessly, not at all confining his meaning to the realm of the physical, though that was obvious too. "Too smart...too...much..." I cannot hope for anything to come of this but I have already set it into motion, he thought in curbed upset.

_She is_, he mused with some sadness.

_And yet I need her_, he admitted to himself, to the wood, to the night._ And she is my only hope_, he acknowledged consequently. For even a vagrantly foolish man will realize when his last chance has arrived, whether it is in the form of a cavalry or in this case, the form of a literati with a fabulous scowl of displeasure almost always on her features.

Casting one last unreadable glance at the fractured rose to his right, Robin swept out of the glass in three fell steps, suddenly at the foot of the castle even though logically it should have taken him hours to even get out of the wood.

Enchanted was the way of things here though so 'should have' held little conceivable ground here as things were.

He moved through the castle as only its keeper might, fluidly, unnoticeably, almost as if he were a part of the manor itself, until he reached Raven's door and here he made his presence known by opening the door, if very quietly so.

She lay there as he had left her not a night before and his devotion to all things beautiful resonated painfully in his eyes. Somehow Raven had managed to assimilate a heavenly glow that cocooned her body in whitish wisps of what could have been moonbeams, making her skin illuminated and her chiseled features more delicate in the most renaissance of fashions. The black of her lashes laid flat on her equally moon-pale flesh and it occurred to Robin that in her dormant state the almost perpetual scowl she'd worn so far was absent and in its place was something unreadable but in that, not unhappy. And he marveled at the peace there.

"When will you wake?" he asked with no hidden amount of wistfulness but Raven did not stir from her present state and so he took seat on the bed beside her, thoughtful. And as he had done each night so far, he now let his hand boldly frame her right cheek, his cold against her cold, his skin against hers, all coming together in one subtle act of everything in either one of them that was tender and vulnerable.

"You can't disappear like that...master," X said from the door, the crack it was open allowing just half of his face to show through.

"I am keeper here as you know," Robin replied.

"I know this master, but still...you owe us more," X insisted, edgy. "What if she had fallen deeper?" he asked and some of his hidden motive made itself known.

"I'd have returned. I can feel her," Robin told X and after a considering moment, X left, door still partially open. "I can feel you," Robin said to Raven and ran his index finger on a tracing line against her jaw, smooth and lovely, regal and stubborn. That she had no idea what she had done, saying those words and bringing on the black winds, did not concern Robin so much. He knew she couldn't possibly have grasped the reality of it all before this...this escapade. And now? His eyes traveled her. X had done a decent job of bandaging her and some spark of something like jealousy roiled unhappily in Robin's chest but it died down as he surveyed the cleanness of Raven's skin.

There had been scars there, he was certain, specifically shaped markings.

But now they were gone and Robin puzzled over it with the look of a man not at all used to puzzlement. It was the look one got when one was faced with an unavoidable burden or an unexpectedly sour taste in the mouth. His confusion of the scars mingled with that of his befuddlement over her ability to heal him and now, it seemed, heal herself, though much more slowly. It must be magic, he mused with gentleness born of awe and he retracted his hand from her face to rest in his lap. He stayed a while longer before exiting the room soundlessly and retreating to the library for the first time since the mishap with the parchment.

It was there that Raven found him much later.

When she'd woken it was something of an inane feat to keep her eyes open as the world initially heaved like the sea beneath her when she tried to stand, but she'd grabbed hold of one of the bedposts to steady herself and forced some measure of composure down on herself. She'd woken to the thought: I must find him, and she would not be deterred, least of all by herself, she insisted with all stubbornness and had very gingerly made her way down the hall, hand bracing the wall for steadiness. In walking she noticed something very odd about her vision though she couldn't put a name to it. She thought, for some reason, she could see more sharply, smell more accurately and her sensory of tactile feeling was readily apparent with her bare feet pressed on the lush carpet of the hall. Everything was heightened and she brought a cautious hand up to her forehead again.

The gem was there, as if it were a part of her.

Well, she supposed somewhat balefully that it was now.

Her tapered fingers traced its edges, the hardness contrasting strikingly with the comparative tenderness of her skin, even paler with all her hair framing her face now, short as it had become in the throes of the incantation. She let her hand move from her forehead to run through her hair tentatively and it was not a very long run any more for her longest hair was up front, making a dynamic sweep down from the shorter strands in the back. So many changes, her heart ached a little and she doggedly had steeled herself to keep walking until two familiar doors appeared—as if by magic—on her left.

"So there you are," she said to the door and it opened for her obligingly, but she was not surprised. If anything, Raven found herself offering a slight nod and smile at the gold knob on the door before entering the library.

"You've woken," he said and she made an abrupt turn down an aisle of books she assumed he'd taken to reorganizing now. She found him shortly though. With her newly exaggerated senses, she also seemed to be almost unduly aware of Robin's presence, wherever he was, as if he drew her to him. His cape lay on the ground, a corner of it stuck unhappily beneath a pile of tomes and his hair was ruffled like someone had just ran their hands through it with little or no discretion. But his eyes were clear and it was there that Raven allowed her gaze to linger, locking her irises boldly with his.

"You are alright?" she asked.

"I am now unharmed," he said, gratitude there and she nodded.

"Me neither, though your castle is stranger to me now," she said and he quirked a brow.

"How is it you mean?" he probed, gesturing for her to sit wherever and so she did, interlacing her fingers a little nervously as she tended to do when things stopped making any sense at all.

"All my sensations, they're more than they usually are and that aside, there's this." She touched a hand to the gem in her forehead. Robin stepped nearer to the sitting girl and knelt.

"May I?" he inquired softly and she gave a quiet 'yes' or something along those lines as he ran his own index finger over the hard jewel, eyes as open with wonder as Raven imagined hers had been.

"Do you know what it is?" she asked with little hope that he did.

"A chakra I think, for your Magic," he said after a very long unmeasured silence and his words settled over her like a heavy blanket that one was too sick to remove.

"_My_ 'Magic'?" she asked weakly now and Robin withdrew his hand with a sigh.

"It seems you have something of a sorcerer's power in you, though maybe you did not know it. I imagine it comes from your mother's side," he intoned as one teaching a student.

"My mother did not practice magic...well, father never mentioned it," Raven amended her claim and realized only now how very little she did know of her family's background. Supposedly they'd always been regarded—according to Terra, and even Star who wasn't wont to talk unkindly about anyone usually—as the oddities of the city and never quite 'up there' with the rest of the upper class.

Raven had never inquired further simply because it sounded dull and the way she'd seen it, the past was the past.

But now she sorely wished she'd asked something and out of an unusual distress, she buried her face in her hands, as though to hide away from it all. It was a bit much to happen all so very, very fast and her head was spinning—even with her eyes closed. She was well aware of the rustling of Robin's clothes, his tunic against the broadcloth of his breeches and the clack of his boots as he stood from where he'd so recently kneeled, and she heard more than saw him begin to move erratically.

Dully she was aware he was unsettled by her reaction.

"It may or may not help you to know you have offered my...you have offered me hope, Raven," he said and now she did look up at him, eyes a little glassy...but not cold.

"Hope? How can a girl who has none for herself offer it to anyone else?" she asked, heart painfully tight in her chest.

"I think you have it, despite what you may think," Robin dismissed her claim and now she grew angry.

"You _dare_ to think you know more than I about what I do and do not know of myself?" she flared.

A frown creased his brow. He'd upset her already. When before he would have been annoyed there was far too much clear to him now to allow himself that frivolous frustration with her aptness to be argumentative, so he inhaled and did his best to explain.

"No, but I know what I have seen and it tells me that you are the maiden the prophecy speaks of, the incantation you read could be stirred by her alone. Raven, you may yet break this curse of eternal winter," Robin tried not to be too grand about it but it meant so much to him he lost himself in the rationalization and as Raven's eyes widened she could only vaguely nod an 'oh.' "I do apologize though. Even I know that this is a lot happening very quickly, too quickly perhaps," he said now and she nodded definitely in agreement here.

"I think so," she said brusquely, flattening the imaginary wrinkles in her skirts.

"But it is true, or what I believe to be true and as master of the castle and keeper, you may do well to trust me on my conjecture," Robin said, trying hard not to launch into a very elaborate speech about what she absolutely had to believe...about how she was not only his first hope in a long time, but his only hope. He tried and being Robin, he succeeded, but Raven sensed something of what went on in him underneath the surface anyway.

"You look at me as a man who has seen his last glass of water," she spoke softly and the echoes in the gigantic library were kinder now, no howling wind at their backs.

"I am grateful to you," Robin said evasively but no less sincerely.

"So do you read much or is this all for another show of grandeur?" Raven asked after a time, deciding to take unashamed shelter in the smaller things for now, the earthly things. Robin clicked his tongue.

"I read," he said shortly, defensively, and she laughed for some reason, maybe out of a need to release some of the tension building in her, maybe for some other reason.

"None of that again my Robin, you and X cannot speak with me at length in two-syllabic sentences any more than a wall, fixed look of expressionless nature or no," she warned with a slight glimmer to her amethyst irises that made Robin smile slightly too.

"X is not unkind to you?" he inquired as if he expected her to say he was.

"No, just..." she trailed off, uncertain.

"X," Robin offered with half pretend helpfulness.

"Yes, that's about it," she agreed.

"Well, I do like to read, and one has much time to spend...reading and so on when one has all the time in the world," he said with some note of brokenness in his tone that made Raven want to reach a hand out and pull him to her, but she refrained.

"You are not very young are you, though you look to be not much older than I," she admitted her contradictory thoughts and he shrugged.

"It is hard to tell here, young or old, for time does not really exist except maybe for the indication of winter which is a falsehood anyway because it is always winter," he said and Raven frowned, right hand running absently over some nearby books.

"But, if you did measure the same," she suggested.

"About five centuries," he deadpanned and she choked on nothing.

"Five centuries!" she exclaimed, disbelieving and in no small measure, appalled.

"Now I have a question," he interjected and she brought herself back full-circle, the picture of someone unruffled rather than someone stunned beyond life, her previous look to be sure.

"Yes?" she prompted. He knelt beside her again.

"Why do you call me 'your' Robin?"

The pile of books she'd been idly running her hands over toppled with her surprise at his question and the rustling of the pages and the hard-hitting of the covers on the marble beneath them resounded in almost musical tones all around them.

And it wasn't his question that had thrown her off, no. That would have been at least a little bit expected, perhaps.

No, rather, it was the answer that had occurred to her so quickly she dared to believe it had preceded the end of his question. It was that immediately Raven found her thoughts to have simply answered: because you are mine.

But she would not say it and instead offered him a non-committal shrug.

"Tell me someday then," Robin replied, trying to scrutinize her as best he could with little success.

"Someday," she agreed and added with new kindness, "Thank you too." At this Robin shifted to turn to face her more directly, his smooth hands resting on the ground behind him, leaning on his arms.

"For what?" he asked, honestly perplexed—again.

"...you tried to protect me," she murmured, gaze now busily glued to the marble swirls of the floor.

"I am sorry I could not," he said, regret and self-loathing evident in his voice.

"It was not your fault. Had I not read the paper..."

"I told you it was Magic, not Mischief. You couldn't have known otherwise," Robin made quick work of making Raven's attempted self-blame null and void with tacit explanation. "I..." but he could not finish.

Now was not the time for the whole truth, as much as Raven's deep, beautiful eyes requested it of him.

Now was not the time to tell he'd not only known it was Mischief, but known what would happen.

Not now...not yet...

He could not face her loathing of him in this moment...not yet...

Robin needed her to trust him, to even perhaps like him. He needed her...they all needed her...

And the prophecy would not be denied...

His mind, soul, and heart warred in the span of thirty deafening seconds before Raven shifted uncomfortably on the floor.

"You..." she tried to get him to finish his sentence.

"I…wish I could have protected you," he said at last and while it wasn't what the truth that went hand-in-hand with his previous clause, it was a truth nonetheless and it seemed to assuage her for now.

"You have done me much honor and kindness," Raven admitted, resting her chin in her hands as she eyed him thoughtfully, curiously.

"I do what I may," Robin said without pause and she answered him with a soft glint in her eyes that said: yes, I know.

"How is it to be immortal?" she asked suddenly.

Robin considered, eyes darkening from cobalt to midnight, flecks of silver edging their ways in from the sides.

"Lonely," he said at last and she didn't ask him anything else that day.

* * *

Yes I know, short AND not a lot happened. I'm sorry. Please stay with me though if you can! I'd really appreciate it!

Review please!

-Rei


	8. VIII : Immortal

Thank you so much for all the kind support on this story and for sitting through all the er...artistic license. I am very pleased and still somewhat surprised that you all like it but I am by no means complaining. I guess I'm still getting used to the idea of people not being bothered by imagery and the like.

Thank you a million times over and please if you have time, review this chapter as well. It is always appreciated.

Dedicated to all reviewers/readers and so on.

Special acknowledgements/ dedications to:

**The Writer you Fools**...some weeks are harder than others, yes? And, on another note, just read through _'This Game We Play'_ again and your skill with humor is a particularly delightful thing, especially when I'm dragging my feet through an essay due in five hours.

**Cherry Jade**...can't wait til your projects are over—til you get new ones I guess, oy—and we get more of your wonderful _'Beauty Is Within Us'_!

**alena-chan**...your reviews bring a smile to my face as do your stories! Especially _'Casablanca Lilies'_, which is my favorite so far I think.

and of course

**castle in the air**...hon, you finally updated _'Waste Not, Want Not'_. I'm proud and giddy...you surprised me:D

* * *

**Glass**

**Chapter Eight: Immortal **

* * *

"You lied to her?" X barely kept his rising temper down by whispering hoarsely.

"I had no choice," Robin sighed, right hand massaging his temple. It was night and Raven had since retired to her rooms. Now he sat in a finely gilded chair, all molded with gold etching and upholstered with a finer than fine blue velvet reminiscent of the chairs in the dining hall. But this was clearly a larger one, one that a person would sooner sit in to contemplate life philosophies than have a cup of tea and it was thus that Robin sat now, other hand restlessly strewn over his knee. X, for his part, stood in front of one of the fireplace, arm leaning against it, face nearly leaning into the jumping flames as if to scorch his displeasure away. The red cast an unusually ambient glow across his skin and eyes, making him seem a very shadow of vermillion against the backdrop of the hot tendrils but then he turned again to glance at Robin and once more he was brought back to simply being a disgruntled young man with an agitated twitch to his brow.

"Master, excuse the boldness—" he began.

"I always have," Robin cut in lightly and X fought back the amusement he had grown to harbor in his tête-à-tête moments with the keeper. He didn't dislike the man. In fact he rather admired him for his endurance, for his calm, for his intellect, and so on...and this was in no short part because X himself found he had no patience for even the minutely unintelligent. But Robin was not at all unintelligent and now lounging as master of his ageless and eternal castle in that ridiculously elaborate chair of his, he was the picture of a Victorian lord, a little lofty and entirely charming.

"Yes, I've noticed," X said wryly and Robin laughed shortly. He found a similar companion in X that X found in him. Suffice to say they were like two sides of a coin for one reason or another, though one was master and the other servant, essentially. They had a certain unspoken understanding of who held the upper hand in here and it is possibly for that reason alone that they could treat each other as equals, never overstepping the invisible boundaries—invisible boundaries an oversensitive Roy preferred to call 'unwritten' whenever they came up in conversation between he and X.

"Go on," the master of the keep gestured with the hand on his knee, not imperiously but prompting. X turned all the way now and situated himself in a leaning position against the left side of the hearth, back pressed hard against the stone fixture. His arms were crossed, as usual, and Robin did his best to steel himself for what he had a general idea of was to come.

X could be downright impossible at times.

"By lying to her have you not jeopardized the likelihood that she will help u—you?" X fixed his question immediately but the beginning of 'us' hung between them like a burning bridge.

"We," Robin emphasized the word pointedly and X did not wince outwardly but his insides twisted uncomfortably. "We would have no chance at all had she thought I was the sole reason for her captivity here, X. You know this as well as I. Come, do not speak to me in couched leads," he all but demanded, a bit of his familiar and very quick fury edging into his tone.

"I am not sire, actually. I find the deceit to be most troublesome and I think you have been long without other company to believe she would not have helped otherwise," X said, bold to a fault.

"And yet you fail to consider that even if I told her it was I who bound her here, I could not tell her why. There is the sordidly fine print, my friend," Robin said bitterly and here X found he had to yield a bit. He was right in this.

"She must have faith," X scowled.

"She has nothing to have faith in," Robin defended abruptly, voice rising.

The fire crackled strangely in the awkward silence that ensued and both men looked at each other, the standing servant down at the sitting subjugator, each holding the other's willfulness against him as an annoyance, knowing full-well he too had that same affliction of lofty insistence. They did not often disagree though they did exchange barbs—one needed some sarcastic and yes, cynical relief in the span of five centuries and while Roy was the genial support and optimism and other less prominent beings in the castle like Hotspot were at least company, none provided for Robin the kind of companionably opposition that X did. It was much the same for X who, though he did like Roy much more than he let on, was grateful for the seriousness his master offered to him...especially in darker moments over the many years when he feared the lucidity of their plight, lest he lose himself to delusion and make-believe.

It was so very difficult to tell after all this time what was and was not real.

"Sire, you must tell her though," X insisted and Robin leaned forward on his knees, putting his head in his hands briefly and groaned.

"I know. But if I can only tell her half the truth where is the point in it when it may only serve to keep her from...from helping?" Robin argued still.

"If she finds out on her own of your trick she will not help anyone here at all," X said bluntly. Of course he was right. Robin knew as much. He just hated to admit it.

"Eventually," Robin allowed and X bit his tongue on the initial retort of: _preferably before the next century, my liege_. Non-verbalized, his expression read it well enough anyway as Robin eyed him caustically. But his master was kind behind all of the bluster and stubbornness and coldness that came with being cursed with something so inhuman as immortality. So he simply said, "Eventually I will. I promise."

X heard, and more importantly perhaps, the castle heard.

"Very well, master," X said after the pause, slipping back and forth from one courteous address to the next because variety kept the bland taste out of his mouth that surely would have festered there from being in constant servitude otherwise.

"Leave me," Robin both ordered and requested, a toneless expression of the simple wish to be alone and this X understood in him best of all, this X very nearly sympathized with for it was quite possibly how he felt more than ninety percent of the time.

There was something beautiful and fulfilling about having nothing but one's self to contend with...beautiful and dangerous, and there was nothing else like it to be sure.

X left the room as asked, intending to pick a shadow in which to hollow himself for a while, to clear his mind but something steered him in the direction of Raven's room and he found himself standing uncertainly outside her door. He granted the nametag with what for X was a rueful smile—to anyone else it seemed a bit of a sardonic smirk, but who was there to see? No one, of course.

The nametag still read 'Beauty' but it appeared that the lovely Raven had taken to it with either a piece of charcoal or ink from somewhere and messily scrawled **RAVEN**. Well, it looked like it. It was a little hard to tell because she seemed to have tried to simultaneously scribble out '_Beauty_' making it little more than a mess of black squiggles. He shook his head.

X liked the girl, he admitted to himself, staring at the defaced nameplate. Certainly he did his utmost not to. What need had he of more than his master after all? He told himself none. But the girl had struck something in him, a chord to resonate with so unexpected, as though only one person in all the world—him—was supposed to know that chord, but somehow she'd managed to hit it too and call out in him something unnamed. And apparently she was the girl the prophecy spoke of, the maiden. The incantation had proved as much and the markings he'd rubbed salve over—now gone to the naked eye, but X knew they must still be there for they were an unnatural cut—were just the added inclination, not to mention her chakra.

But the prophecy weighed on him.

There was more to it than merely having a girl traipse in and rescue them all, cure them all. Idly he thought on how convenient it would be if it were simply a matter of waving a wand or a mystical hand here and there to make the shadows flee from the eaves of the manor, make the curse melt with the sun and the snow.

But no, it was not so.

There was the gray-shaded clause that concerned the absolutes of life and death and X found he could not look at the girl without thinking of her potential sacrifice.

It was perhaps for that reason that he was so testy with her always.

She reminded him of what he and the others needed from her and equally of what she might have to give. And he did not like the idea of being a hand in an execution, however indirect or even necessary it might have been.

That Robin felt the same he was certain. If possible, the master probably felt even darker about this subject matter. His ability to brood and punish himself was legendary—or it would have been if he had been able to leave the castle in the past 500 years so suffice to say his ability to brood and punish himself was inestimable.

And surely he did that very thing now, while X stood outside the girl's door, similarly brooding though none so bleak as Robin tended to.

Yet the clause was so cryptic that X found even he had hope enough to believe Raven would not end a lifeless body at the threshold of a disenchanted castle in the final lines of the prophecy. He dared to believe that there was something he and the others—even Robin—were missing.

It was so very nearly the only saving grace his conscience had.

He rubbed his eyes and as if on cue the clock tolled like thunder throughout the halls.

"That time then," he mumbled to himself and turned to walk away when the creak of the door stopped him.

"X?" She didn't sound like she'd been asleep at all, he thought.

"Lady," he said not turning but glancing at her, a three-quarter's perspective keeping him from being rude...barely.

"Is he alright?" she asked and he faced her fully now, taking in her wide, violet eyes like a person taking on direct sunlight.

"He will be," X said and Raven sighed.

"Everything here is about what 'will be' when what I am really interested in is what _is_," she complained, annoyed and blew a few stray strands of hair out of her face.

"We are all interested in _what is_, as you say," X reproved.

"You at least seem used to the vagueness," she countered quickly and X shrugged.

"One never really gets used to what is not meant to be," he said and Raven, put out at having her initial irritation—the mere result of inane restlessness—deflate, looked away from X with obvious intent. "Thank you for saving him."

"You're welcome," was her automatic response even as she registered the very oddity of X being grateful and met his gaze again. "Do you know why I see so strangely now?" She wasn't certain why she asked—not certain, but an inkling of something told her or reminded her that X always seemed to have an air about him of someone who was trying to know less than he really did so as to answer less questions.

"I have some thought on the matter," he said carefully but not slowly. She arched a brow.

"Well, I would feel most obliged to you if you'd be so kind as to share said thought," Raven half-smirked. X sighed and it was not a comfortable thing for him; sighing said too much about a person for his liking and he stifled the one that came on its heels.

"It is possible that something of the castle's...enchantment has laid itself upon you, for what you describe is much like how our keeper and master once described his own sight to me," X explained without explaining. Raven could barely repress a growl in the back of her throat, her temper returning as she felt him still keeping too many things from her...just like the rest of them...even Robin, much as her heart despised admitting it.

"I do not need to be sheltered, X," she spat and his eyes widened a bit at the venom in her tone. He forgot too quickly she was not like other maidens, easily dissuaded by a fancy turn of vague phrasing or scared off by it and more crucially perhaps forgot even more quickly what a maiden was like in the first place anymore, it having been so very long since he had interacted with one before her.

But just because he had forgotten did not mean he was wrong in his choice of action, some part of himself claimed defensively and he would be the absolutely last soul or fragment of a soul to admit he was wrong ...even if he was.

I am _not_ wrong, he thought; angry suddenly at Raven for what he told himself was unadulterated brazenness on her part for things she could not possibly understand. Had he just been defending her earlier? Surely not, he scoffed to himself. If the master lies to her she has only brought it on herself, he insisted now, convincing his own mind of what he'd been reluctant to believe before. Anger was some of the very best motivation, especially impatient anger and X found the small empathetic part of him dimmed markedly as Raven conjured spades of the disquieting feeling in him.

He considered her proclamation only an instant longer before speaking.

"The curse rests on you too now, _lady_. I suggest you live up to the prophecy or you will have to continue to deal with me indefinitely and I doubt that is something that either one of us finds attractive in the least," X said coldly and now he did leave, his pace the brisk stride of someone profoundly miffed. Equally bothered, Raven glared after him.

And the lamp on the wall next to her fairly exploded.

She jumped and then glanced at it anxiously, remembering all too well the nature of many things in this castle—such as the fireplace, now become Hotspot, and the like.

"Oh dear," she breathed and began to try and pick up the pieces, babbling and feeling more and more like an unruly child by the second. "Now look you, I did not mean it. I am not sure even how I did not mean it. This simply does not happen where I come from," she said unhappily, scooping a few smaller pieces over to her growing pile. And she rushed on, "There's little reason for it you know, my power or Magic as they like to call it. I've no roots in sorcery to speak of but this place seems riddled with it so maybe it is becoming a part of me anyway—" she was now putting all the fragments onto a hollowed space in the skirt of the dress she'd deigned to wear that day, an undecorated blue one, "—and maybe it will all make sense some day but really until then I can only tell you I am very, very sorry. Though in my defense things just don't explode when one is angry where I come from! I mean, unless one plans it out and that's a rather messy task in itself that no one I know has ever cared to waste the effort on anyway!" And she stood, holding her skirts up so that her feet up to her knees showed, the front she held serving as a kind of carrier for the broken lamp.

"What happened?" Roy asked as he materialized in front of her and she gave a startled gasp that coincided with the sound of something else shattering in the distance. At that, she groaned.

"Hell's teeth if I know!" she raged and pushed right through Roy's astral form, something she would normally have the care and politeness not to do but that at the moment had no patience for. Roy followed, unbothered by her sordid mood.

"Why are you carrying the lamp?" he asked.

"I broke it, didn't I?" she retorted, still stalking in the direction of the other breakage.

"Well, sort of I guess...suppose you did in that other sound too. Probably a footstool," Roy commented and she whirled on him, broken pieces jangling in the ladle of her skirt.

"Look Roy, I like you, I do, but I've not got the patience for this right now so if you're not going to be helpful to me I would most appreciate some solitude while I try and fix these things before I go and bring down the whole castle around our very ears!" she exclaimed, flustered beyond belief. Roy, bless him, did not seem offended by her tone or suggestion.

It had been too long with the curse for him to fault Raven for her combined reaction of confusion and fury. So he simply offered her a softer, more authentic smile a brother might and gave a sigh that was not so much unkind as it was sympathetic to her plight.

"I will leave you then to your own devices, lady. If you should need anything, you need only think hard of me, of anyone. You know that now, I'm sure," he said and disappeared back into invisibility. Immediately the sorceress-to-be felt regretful at her overly harsh words and scowled at her feet.

"You witch. He was only trying to help you," she admonished herself and then to the air where she thought she still felt Roy's presence, "Forgive my insolence, friend. You have been very kind."

"Worry not Raven." And perhaps guessing something of what Raven was thinking now, he also said, "We are not all quite as short tempered as my friend X," Roy's voice floated around her, ever accommodating and a little bit amused and Raven smiled at his incorrigible cheerfulness. It wasn't quite a dandy's demeanor; he had a serious side for all his light-hearted encouragement. But he provided the much needed break she felt she might lose her mind without, a break of basic human kindness with less mystery than some. There was something of a wavering pause before Roy added a little helplessly, "And he does not mean to be so...the way he always is."

"Thank you. I shall try to remember," she said and waited until she felt his absence to continue to walk to find whatever else it was she'd caused to explode so far, only then having X's words sink in: _the curse rests on you too..._

_Immortal_, she mused.

"Well, I shall have a lot of time to read," she told herself uneasily. "Of course reading is what got me into some of this mess to begin with," she went on blandly. "So maybe I'd best stick to unraveling the curse, eh?"

No one answered her.

"Fine, be that way," she said to the castle and she could swear she heard it huff in response as she hurried to some place she might mend the broken lamp.

* * *

I wonder what'll happen when she fixes that lamp.

(hint, hint)

I realize there was um...no interaction between the Robin and the Raven here...next time there will be...but there is some set-up necessary in between and all that and I'm rather fond of all the other characters too frankly.

So um, hope you don't mind too much.

(nervous laughter)

-Rei


	9. IX : Apart

Sorry this took so long. Thank you for waiting. This is almost an interlude, though things do happen...it's build-up again...sigh. I'll stop making excuses.

Thank you to all who have reviewed and are granting this story the time it seems to be demanding. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Dedicated to

**The Writer you Fools**, **alena-chan**, **Cherry Jade**, and **castle in the air**, writers I admire with great joy and dance for when I realize there's been an update. Heh.

* * *

**Glass**

**Chapter Nine: Apart**

Pulling a grimace, Raven sighed another long, airless sigh.

For years she'd honed the virtue of patience, needing it to keep herself from saying things like 'No, I really don't like you' or 'Actually I think dancing is quite stupid' and other similarly impolite, if honest, responses. She'd worked to carefully craft the visage of unreadable indifference, nodding when needed and only truly being herself around her family, Garth, Gar, and Vic.

But it wasn't simply out of the necessity of politeness that she did it. Raven knew well what kind of trouble her tongue could get her in, worse than Terra which was to say something indeed. More importantly, she knew what trouble it could get her family in and that was where she drew a thick line. The death of father and mother came so early that to Raven, Terra and Star were her parental figures, mother and father, Garth a brother at this point, all the kinds of people she would never be, but would not want to trade for all the world.

This, however, was something rather different. It was a broken lamp and Raven had never been as handy with mechanics as she should have, for all her artistry with glass-blowing and whatnot.

"I ought to have listened to Vic after all," she said to herself absently, finger tracing an edge of one of the larger shards of the lamp. He'd tried to teach her the basics of all that was to being not only a worker in a forge but other things—things that would be useful in mending a lamp, for instance. But she hadn't had the inherent knack and being Raven—still honing patience at that point—had turned her eye from it, remarking in a mutter that, "I prefer glass. It's more human."

To which of course Vic had inquired, "Why?"

"It's more fragile," she had said and left to return to the cottage in time for dinner.

Far from home now, a pang in her heart reminded her of the distance and so absent in her thought, she became careless, hand slipping and she hissed as it left a shallow slice across her palm. Wincing, she lifted it instinctively to her mouth and blew to soften the sting.

She sighed again. "You're maybe more trouble than you're worth," she spoke to the broken lamp. "I've not the skill for this sort of thing, you know. I'm sorry," she added the apology, wise enough to take heed of the likelihood of every inanimate object in the palace not truly being as inanimate as one would assume. "I do wish I could fix you."

_**Then do it.**_

Raven's head shot up, looking around wildly.

"Who's there?" The long, carpeted hall, lavish in its wall fixtures and high with its arched ceilings did not have a whisper of a breeze, no click of a door, nothing...

_**Fix me.**_

Nothing but the voice...somewhat monotone, but not flat, simply unreadable really.

"Hello?" she called out, her own question echoing back at her tenfold.

**_Fix me...please._**

"But how?" Raven asked the nothing, moved less by the word 'please' than by the tone—longing, sad, wistful...human. She daren't look at the pieces of lamp sitting limply on her skirt for fear of eyes staring back at her, or the like, but waited for an answer.

_**You can. I know these things.**_

"_What_ things? I'm just a person, a...a..." she trailed off dumbly. She was about to say 'prisoner' but that wasn't right...she wasn't that.

What _am_ I?

_**Magic things.**_

"Magic!" she sputtered incredulously. "Forgive me, but I'm afraid you are mistaken. I do not know magic. I am not magic!" Raven shook her head, not believing the conversation, and believing even less what she was having it with, eyes still carefully tracing the designs on the ceiling rather than the shards in her lap.

**_You can! Just think it, gather the pieces, lay your hands over them, and think it...believe you can fix me..._**

Shutting her eyes hard against everything, Raven inhaled deeply, her exhale seeming to breeze through the endless corridor.

"You're enchanted, and I think you're quite mad too," Raven said after a long, pensive silence and she was disturbed by the voice's response of:

**_Mad? I might be. But I know you can fix me...you can heal me..._**

"Very well, I shall try," she replied after another pause, staring at the pieces dubiously as she gathered them in a small pile on the carpet. "You know, that was a bit of a nasty cut you gave me," she remarked as she gently laid each piece against the other.

_**My apologies, Raven.**_

"You're not calling me Beauty," she thought aloud, pleased.

_**That is not your name.**_

"Well, then! You are at least a sensible mad being," she said amiably and then, "Alright, if this does not work, I am not responsible, you hear?"

A silence.

_**Just try.**_

"Yes, alright," Raven replied doubtfully but laid her hands over the shards—gently this time so as not to cut herself—and closed her eyes, concentrating.

Briefly she wondered: _I don't suppose there are magic words for this sort of thing._

And then she felt something strange...though not unpleasant. A warmth, similar to when she had healed Robin, poured through her and she felt suddenly foolish. She had indeed helped Robin that time, so why not this being, this time?

_It is a lamp, _she reasoned stubbornly. _How was I to know it would work the same?_

But in remembering Robin's recovery, she found new belief in her ability and her focus came more easily until she realized her hands did not rest over cold, uneven bits...but something relatively even and warm.

"Thank you." It was the voice from before, but different as it resonated from a human chest.

She opened her eyes slowly, as if to avoid morning's first glow.

"You're wel—" she began but stopped short.

The lamp no longer sat, shattered on the floor. Well, alright, true, she did remember thinking anything that had a voice would probably become human, alive as it were. It was a man, from voice and form she could tell—lithe of limb and tall. But curiously, he stood before her, clothed but beneath the clothes all over his body there seemed to be a wrapping, as though his entire body was bandaged for fear of it escaping him. The only exposed portions were his two eyes, black as coal, reflecting the light that came in through the windows of the hall.

"Yes, I know. My appearance leaves something to be desired," the man said in the same nearly monotone voice, but it was with a hint that seemed to smile as he said this, a wryness—of someone used to people not taking to his physical traits. Immediately Raven felt a twinge of shame.

"Well, it is not what I expected," she said truthfully, also apologetically, eyes finding her feet unduly fascinating to distract herself from her moment of surprise.

"Don't worry, Raven. I am indebted to you," he said and she heard no begrudging in his voice, just plain and simple gratitude. Of course, this only served to make her shift her feet, more uncomfortable. She did not feel like someone anyone ought to be 'indebted to'. Barely containing a laugh, she mused that she did not feel quite like anyone at all here, so many things whirling anew and estranged to her.

"How do you call yourself?" she inquired at last, facing the new stranger again and to her surprise, he bent at the waist.

"Well, I have several names, but most commonly they call me Negative," he introduced himself and rose from his polite bow.

"Negative?" she asked, doubtful even as she conceded that Hotspot was perhaps more unlikely and that she'd accepted that one without a blink of an eye.

"You might have noticed the penchant for odd names here lately," he said thoughtfully and she nodded, thinking: or no names—here she thought of Robin. But less put off by the bandaged appearance now, feeling somewhat accomplished by the success of the 'fixing' of him, Raven took this moment to subtly examine the man called Negative. She watched as he looked around him, and she realized he looked as a man might who thought he would never see the world again as a man should.

Her heart ached and the curse echoed strangely in her chest.

"Do you know anything of the curse that lays upon Robin...Robin's castle?" she asked softly, eyes following the sun through the window into the vast lands around the castle itself. She'd been about to stop with 'the curse that lays upon Robin' but thought better of it. She felt more than saw Negative sigh beside her as he rubbed the back of his head.

"I know it can be undone," he said after a pause in which the sunlight seemed to cascade in silver-white waves through the windowpane, glimmering in a shining dance on the elaborate walls behind the odd, but amiable pair.

"Ah," Raven said, trying to indicate her acknowledgement of his answer without disclosing her disappointment with the brevity. Turning her hand over, Raven eyed the cut in her hand as a problem one is not certain one can solve and laid her other hand over it, closing her eyes, and concentrated.

There was a familiar flush of tingling warmth.

And when she opened her eyes to look at her palm, there was hardly anything there at all, just the smallest white sliver of a new scar.

"I see you're catching on," Negative remarked, his voice still unreadable, but—Raven noted much like her own—not unfriendly. Somehow she thought he meant far more than he said but she did not look at him this time, simply nodding in response.

"I think I might be," she said softly, inattentively running her hand across the smoothness of her skirts, marveling at the absence of the sting from the cut just moments before. Engrossed, she was surprised when she felt another presence enter the vicinity and when she looked around to find nothing, she paused before a soft half-smile made its way almost reluctantly across her features. "Speedy," she called more than asked, recognizing the invisible swish of air before his contour materialized, that same faint glow clarifying his shape. He too wore a smile, his being more of a grin really that bordered on a smirk, simply because Speedy tended to always look like he knew something you didn't.

"You did it," he said cheerfully. "Knew you would," he added smugly and then, "You know it is these times I wish I wasn't like this. I should like to embrace you." And the silence that followed was not awkward but understanding as Raven felt some sense of mission within her, an actual desire to help. _But what can you do?_ Some part of her asked. _Magic, apparently_—another part said and chuckled. _Yet, what will become of everything even if you do lift the curse? You don't know what you're doing._

_But I must try_, was her finalizing thought as she turned to Speedy, her smile more than half now, even a glimmer of it reaching her eyes.

"One day," she said gently, a promise yet again. _For Robin_, she thought momentarily and shook it off. _For everyone_, she amended and that sat much calmer in her heart than anything else had lately.

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She did not see Robin for many days. Suspecting X greatly of knowing his whereabouts, at first Raven did her utmost to elicit an answer from the grumbling young man—who she also continued to try and examine for his source of enchantment, always coming up empty-handed. X was a mystery within the mystery and often when she would speak with him—or barrage him, as it were—he reminded her of Robin. And that was strange perhaps because Robin had, overall, been what could only constitute as nice, if sometimes standoffish and admittedly confusing, but always kind.

X on the other hand...

"Cease your inane questioning, please!" X exclaimed at one point, hands waving erratically in the air, a sure sign she was getting to him because rarely did he show any physical distress.

"If you tell me where he is, I'll stop presently," she replied, unfazed. X groaned, rubbing his temples.

X was not by nature accommodating, however, and did not answer her.

Yet there was something about him, the way he turned to run his hand through his hair, was like Robin. The way his lips curved down when he was seriously considering something he refused to share...even the way—when she wasn't bothering him as he put it—he would have peaceable conversations with her, intelligent and witty to a fault.

Perhaps that was why she continued to inquire concerning Robin's whereabouts to him and his chagrin. But X, though sometimes less grumpy—as she put it—than usual, refused adamantly to tell her much of anything—as usual, she would always say at which he would flinch and mutter something back.

And so, discouraged, after five days of dedicated badgering of X, Raven said: "Fine, then," and left him to his own devices.

If X would not tell her, she would wait. It was not like she did not have time.

But she would not yield to sitting around dumbly for hours, certainly not.

So Raven explored.

The grounds were inarguably lovely, endless winter or not. Thick evergreens chorused over the land in melodic twists that made the estate around the castle itself seem almost maze-like. But Raven never found herself lost, to her surprise and relief.

Sometimes on her walks Speedy would materialize, and used to this now, she smiled a greeting and he would talk with her about what seemed to be nothing in particular, but eventually seemed to be something after all.

If only she knew what, was a common feeling of misgiving after he would disappear.

Other hours spent reading in the library, careful not to touch any stray papers, Raven found herself joined by Negative who appreciated the company in a solitary activity, much as she did. If one or the other felt talkative—usually neither felt talkative per se but if one or the other perhaps was interested in what the other chose to read, they might sit a while, speaking on fine words and not so fine words, afternoon slipping away behind them as they reveled in the written pages.

On one afternoon, head nestled in the crook of her elbow as she paged through a thicker binding, Raven sighed carelessly. To which, Negative turned, inquisitive. He sat a few feet away, back against a particularly sturdy pile of books, one knee bent to prop his book on, one hand turning a page even as he continued to watch Raven thoughtfully.

"Troubled?" he asked in a way that could be mistaken as uncaring if one did not understand that if Negative truly didn't care, he would not ask in the first place.

This Raven understood.

"I'm not sure," she answered, pushing herself up on her hands, stretching like a cat. The way the sun chose to dance across the room made the air filter gold and the entirety of it looked ageless, busy, studious, and mysterious. As she brought her arms around herself, Raven considered her current company a moment before asking, "Why a lamp?"

"Pardon?" he asked, edging the slightest bit closer.

"Why a lamp? Maybe Hotspot, though a fire makes more sense for him, but why were you turned into a lamp? Is everything here really a...a person?" she asked. Negative let slip a rare chuckle as he laid his book, spine up, on the floor beside him.

"No, much of what you see now is only what it appears to be—a book, a book...a chair, a chair...and so on," he said and then continued after a probing look from Raven to say, "I do not know 'why a lamp' precisely except that perhaps the curse was feeling particularly vindictive when it got to me."

"Oh," Raven nodded blithely and shrugged her shoulders and turned back to her reading.

That was something that never changed, except for the increasing affection she had for the tomes, perhaps. Raven would even wander through the dimly lit halls at night to the door to the library, which eventually seemed to come to her a lot faster—which was silly almost, except that this was an enchanted place, so perhaps not as silly as one might initially assume. Grasping in the dark, her hand would settle over the cool metal of the door handle and with a soft, resounding click she would open it, stepping in and shutting the door equally as quietly behind her.

"Azarath, metrion, zinthos," she whispered during nights like those upon entering and the immense archived library would light with a white glow.

Finding the use of these words beyond halting a frightening black wind had been much of an experiment, an accident even. She had merely wondered what they meant, said them to herself one night in her room, barely a whisper.

But something in the castle, or the air, or something, had heard her.

And the reaction had been for the candle at her bedside to flare up. Already lit, she'd thought it might have been the wind, but ever curious, she'd put it out and said the words again, concentrating deeply on the candlewick.

The flame was bright and very real and as she came to visit the library more and more often at night as she could not sleep, Raven was glad for them, strange as they felt still on her tongue.

Having said the chant, she would wander the library and its labyrinth like towers of books, selecting them randomly because there were far too many to be picky about it...and Raven adored most writing as a general rule. It was one of those things, after all, that did not change, even for all that the rest of her life had.

Books were her solace more often than not.

So when Robin was missing, she spent the better part of her days there when she did not feel like exploring the castle or its grounds beyond where she'd last left off and neither Speedy, nor Negative seemed to have a problem with this, nor X—after all, if she was reading, she wasn't pestering him about Robin.

Hotspot she did not see too often, and then, only in passing, but he was ever kind and would ask 'how is the lady doing?' with a kind tilt to his eyes.

Yet every day she spent with one or the other friendly personage of the palace, or even alone, she more distinctly felt the absence of a certain Robin and for some reason, she worried.

But if he had gone into hiding, Raven was wise enough to tell herself there was a reason, and more so that if she could not pluck the answer out of X after so much concentrated insistence, it was best left alone.

Of course her curiosity picked at her mercilessly, but she did her best to distract herself.

But sometimes at night especially, she turned in the luxury of her down covers, twisting unhappily as her heart wrenched uncomfortably, as if it were being tugged in one direction it could not go. She realized the time apart from Robin was doing something strange to her and she almost felt ill with it, so joined were they from the spell and the meeting in the glass garden.

"Where are you?" she whispered sometimes, standing at the window, hand pressed against the cold clearness, eyes searching the snowy horizon for a black caped figure.

But no one answered and then the day would come, and she would try her best not to think on the elusive master of the castle.

In these days she also visited Arella, talking to her when she needed a glimpse of the life she'd left behind, and especially—though she had yet to admit it to anyone, even the ever genial Speedy—when she felt the pangs of homesickness.

It was one such day, in fact, that Robin decided to reemerge from wherever it was he had been. The disconcerting pains that Raven had been experiencing had been received by him as well, causing sharp pains to course through his head, distracting him, reminding him of her presence...not that he could forget her if he tried.

Not that he wanted to.

X's words from before echoed in his head...he had to tell her the truth of the curse eventually and that morning he'd had a particularly bad bout of tumultuous emotions, translated through his bond with the young girl.

So acknowledging, he left where he had gone—where he always went and where X did indeed know he had been—to locate his Raven.

His Raven?

Shaking his head, he did his best to also shake off that foolish notion.

His Raven indeed, his mind laughed darkly and he shut it off out of necessity.

He found her, standing in the stables, talking to Arella, gently stroking the great animal, almost like she might stroke a child's hair to lull them to sleep or out of a bad dream. And he thought, watching her unseen, that for all her intellect and sharp wit, and even quick temper, Raven was very beautiful, some element of unnamed kindness evident in her mannerisms. The gentle hollow of her throat, the fair unblemished flesh, her wide, knowing eyes the color of dusk, the delicate nature of her wrists and the elegance of her fingers...the lush quality of her lips in an almost eternal frown, which amused him once he learned to understand it did not mean displeasure as much as it was her usual expression to have.

About to make himself known, black cape fluttering in the afternoon wind, Robin halted as he heard Raven's voice, directed at the beautiful horse over her right shoulder:

"And he won't tell me a thing, Arella. You know? I just wanted an idea, the vaguest would do. I'm certain," she sighed and turned, leaning against the door of Arella's pad and the horse affectionately mussed the girl's hair, at which she laughed. It was not a high and light laugh but something with more elegance, more age to it...it was attractive, Robin thought softly, like her.

Don't think these things, something told him. You know what is to happen, it said and Robin's eyes hardened.

Yes, he knew.

But watching her, watching Raven, speak and laugh so freely...he told himself there must be another way and for the voice or the something to quiet itself.

The curse was a curious thing, invoked by the reading, cast hundreds of years ago...binding them all to the eternal winter...to the glass.

And this was odd in itself.

Glass was so very fragile.

And being bound to it made those attached to it also very fragile, immortality inclusive. A bond now formed between him and the girl, and another she did not realize, Raven was indeed what could, in the end, only be defined as an honored captive—not a guest.

A guest could come and go.

A captive must stay until otherwise was said.

And not for the first time, while glad it had been Raven to stumble into the wood, he wished for her sake it was someone else. His heart was mimicking her emotions and Robin winced as the intensity of her feelings made the pain seem a physical knot in his chest, writhing and blind.

_Do you feel this way often?_ He wondered sadly. He had tried to make it hospitable here for her, in small ways that he hoped made a difference—given her a room with wide, open windows that looked out on the snowy hills where she could ride if she wished, made certain the colors were simple, the wardrobe one of the kinder enchanted ones so that she would not have a fuss made over her when she wanted breeches instead of a gown...trusted her.

That one was, perhaps, not so small, he thought as he remembered the black wind with a shiver. He had not accounted for that, never having had anyone there to read the spell, to set things into action, the first step to unraveling the curse. Nearly he'd died for folly.

But no, because she...because Raven, saved him.

_That I could do the same for you,_ he mused wistfully and listened again to Raven who still did not know he was there.

"I miss them," Raven whispered to Arella, as if afraid her voice would carry to the castle and repeat itself magically to everyone in it. She said it like a secret. Sinking down against the wooden gate of Arella's stall, Raven drew her knees to her chest. "I know it is foolish. They are kind here, and even with that horrid spell in the library, everything was fine, but...oh Arella," Raven whispered still, but Robin heard as her voice broke.

It broke like glass.

"Do you think I shall be able to go...to go home if the curse is lifted?" she asked her horse softly, lifting her hand up without looking and Arella nuzzled it as if to say that she hoped so.

Then the violet haired girl's shoulders began to shake ever so slightly and if he had not been listening specifically for her, Robin would have missed it, but he did not. He heard.

She was crying, soft, quiet sobs and he stood, paralyzed as Raven clenched her skirts in her hands. It had been too long since he'd had human company. She was right. For he knew what he saw, hurt, distress, turmoil...but he knew not what to do for it. Mater of this castle, master of this place and I am as useless as a child, he thought darkly.

What he wanted to do, longed to do, was go to her, comfort her...hold her.

He, Robin as she had named him so whimsically, wished to say those words, "Everything will be okay...I will make sure of it." He wanted to make grand promises and to quit his brooding over the whole situation and to forego caution and whatever else held him back.

But the depth of Raven's sadness proved too much for him to understand, overwhelmed by the translation of it between their bond, inundated with sorrow and an omniscient sense of foreboding. Almost he was driven to his knees by the severity of her pain and only just heard her as she spoke again.

"I hope they're alright," she said brokenly between shivers.

And then Robin slipped away, head filled with the troubled girl he could not comfort, heart overflowing with the words he had not the courage to tell her, knowing already the likelihood of her fate.

* * *

Review please and thank you! 

-Rei

P.S. Next chapter of **Hush** soon and MAYBE even **Without You** if it warrants time...I hope. I'm enjoying dabbling in multiple areas.


	10. X : Opposites

'Timid' stop leaving unhelpful reviews. It's a waste of your time and mine. Stop degrading yourself.

* * *

Now then, ugly business out of the way, on to the good stuff:

Thank you all for waiting so patiently. I'm sorry it took me so long. I apologize for error or anything, I'll try and edit it better later, but I was pretty pleased with how this came out. It may seem like little happens but as a hint, I have to say if you look for it, a lot is revealed here. So um, hope you like it and I know this may seem like a jump, but if you read between the lines, you'll understand and if it's still not clear, in upcoming chapters, it will be. The title of the chapter might help too.

Thanks for the encouraging reviews and thanks to people who told me not to give up on it!

Dedicated to: The Writer you Fools, Alena-chan, Cherry Jade and my dear castle in the air

Go check out their writings. They're all different and all very worth it.

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**Glass**

**Chapter Ten: Opposites**

* * *

The dim gold-red flicker of the candle flames cast a mild glow across the long dining table. Set tonight with a pristine white tablecloth all embossed with opalescent flourishes and swirls, the chairs also sported matching white coverings lined in a delicate white-gold satin. As all was white right down to the silk-smooth napkins, everything took on the light flare of orange-red from the fireplace and the gold-red from the candles. 

Robin sat at one end of the long, well stocked table and Raven sat at the other. He wore his cape, as usual, and a fine black suit that made him seem almost a phantom in his own castle...all he was missing was the mask. She wore a simple lilac gown of the softest velvet with earrings and a necklace with amethysts that sparkled in the firelight.

And they ate in silence, beautiful, uncomfortable, evening silence.

Raven lifted her fork, set it down and picked it up again, twirling it idly in between her middle and index fingers.

"Not hungry tonight?" Robin asked, not giving hints as to whether he was offended by this probability or not. He sighed softly, resting his chin on his right hand as he looked down the table at her. She looked ravishing tonight, luminous like the moon and delicate like violets. But her look was spoiled by the way her frown was deeper tonight and this worried him…what troubled her?

He wished she could tell him.

He wished he knew the words to say to tell her he wished she could.

But then again, he wished a lot of things.

"Not very," she admitted dolefully, setting her fork down gently again. She let her eyes wander to the fireplace and her irises drowned temporarily in the gold flicks of flame. Only when Robin spoke again did she break from her trance, and even then not entirely.

"What...what troubles you?" he asked at last and he thought it did not sound all too horrible, considering how he had imagined it sounding—much worse, it should be noted. His deep blue eyes considered her thoughtfully, as usual and now she met his gaze, steady and strong...just like her.

"You will think I am silly," she prefaced. He shook his head.

"No, I won't," he promised.

"I do not know," she said softly and Robin felt his heart do strange, horrible things...he knew. She missed her family. She wanted to go home.

She wanted to leave.

"Raven," he began, suddenly all too ready to tell her everything, but not the 'everything' about the curse's truth, oh no...rather, the 'everything' about the odd stirrings he'd been feeling that had nothing to do with their obligatory bond and everything to do with another kind of bond he was beginning to realize he yearned for.

But the high, grand doors to the dining hall's great expanse flew open and Robin's lips pressed close in a thin line.

"Master, I must interject," X said and his voice was not of the servant—far to airy, but then again, that was very much X. Robin arched a brow.

"I barely even began to speak," he said with deceptively even tones. X shook his head and Raven thought she saw him roll his eyes but it was dark and one couldn't be certain of anything in the dark.

"Yes, I know. But I felt what you were going to say master and I insist you do not," X said and Robin's gaze grew as cold as the winter that draped over his domain. He stood, pushing his chair back from the table, and now his expression was one of open displeasure. But Raven felt more than saw his emotions through their bond—anger...irritation...and...fear?

She did not like to think of Robin being afraid.

"X, you have no right barging in on dinner to lay down restrictions you have no power to enforce," Robin said, his attitude as impassive as a stone wall. A breeze from nowhere, cold as snow and strange as night put out the candles; the fire in the fireplace wavered to dimming embers. Raven repressed a shiver.

"But I am right! You will not tell her!" X retorted, loud and unabashed now. Clearly he felt he'd been putting up with a lot of slack from Robin, for whatever reason and Raven could not discern why. She fisted her hands in the folds of her skirt, anxious and estranged suddenly in this vast and ornate hall and all the finery...lost in the wood again. She stared at her plate as X and Robin continued their argument and it became clear to her that they had momentarily forgotten she was even there.

Something about that hurt.

"I will say and do what I please!" Robin shouted

The embers in the fireplace hushed themselves into darkness and Raven found herself immersed in blindness. She bit her lip.

"See master? You cannot put her before everything else! That is not how the curse works and you know it!" X hissed through the blackness. Heart twisting unkindly, Raven softly pushed her chair back and stood, looking around for any sign of light, any indication of how to get out of that room...find a door...a window...anything.

But she needed out. Her nerves piqued at the next set of words exchanged.

"She is our guest," Robin's voice was noticeably forced now.

"She is much more than a guest master. Pray, remember the words: 'eternal winter for the eternal sinner.' Is that what you want...Robin?" X bit out and his words were sharp little daggers, rough and unforgiving. Raven could hear Robin shifting in the darkness, as if trying to keep himself from doing something he might regret. She was well aware of how duel-reminiscent their conversation was—one hit for one hit and so on...but it felt distinctly like the hits were coming of their own will toward her, running and wrapping themselves around her like thorn-ridden vines.

And the words cut like thorns too.

"X—" Robin began.

"We have waited for so long! Robin, do not deny us what you first offered! You would rob yourself and us of our freedom for the sake of a nosy, caustic, ignorant child!" X's volume echoed through the great hall and Raven felt the beginnings of an eerie sort of suffocation, cold...thick...endless. Vaguely she was aware she must have knocked over one of the candlesticks as her hand hit something in the dark and a metal clang could be heard.

"Raven?" Robin remembered her presence with a sore disappointment in himself for forgetting at all. But Raven did not answer. She closed her eyes, almost pointless in the absolute dark they all stood, but not quite. Instead of searching for a light, she took her mind and tried to feel the direction of the castle...how it seemed to move around her...which would explain why things always seemed to be in a different place.

Even the geography of the place was enchanted, it seemed.

She held her breath too, taking steps, not answering to the calls of her name from Robin...X did not call to her, but then, her heart clenched, she did not expect him to. Odd how she felt a loss for that; it wasn't as though they two had shared anything special, any moments of kindness—not like she and Robin had...but the feeling of loss was there all the same.

And she tried to bury it.

Raven considered using her newfound magic, but she did not want X or Robin to be able to find her so quickly. Just as well, when this thought occurred to her for the third time, her hands brushed what felt like a wall. She ran her hands over it to soon find a thick and curvaceous molding and then something hard, cold, and metal...the door handle.

"Master," X's voice crept through the hall to brush against her ears as her hand paused on the handle. She did shiver now as Robin shifted in the distance behind her; she could hear the rustle of his clothes.

"What, X?"

"She is not worth it," X said coolly and Raven flinched.

Not worth it?

Why do you hate me so? She wondered and surprised herself with the depth of her sadness at her understanding she might never know...that rather, she might continue to go on not knowing while she felt X went on hating her and then she might consequently continue to feel badly about it.

But it made no sense. For all essential purposes he was what Raven back home would have called less than cryptically, an insufferable cad, among other things far more colorful. But Raven felt she was constantly missing something...some secret, perhaps even some part of the curse that dealt specifically with X and that was her only potential answer for being hurt when he so openly vocalized his dislike of her.

Still, it wasn't much and Raven wasn't big on theory so much as fact, but fact wasn't even an option here, it seemed.

Gently she opened the door and stepped through, closing it behind her to another "Raven," from Robin.

When the click of the door sounded, she ran as fast as she could to her room, locked the door and took seat by one of the windows. It was snowing. She could hear the pound of other footsteps—Robin and X, she gathered—coming down the hall, but she ignored them.

To her disbelief, she felt a few hot tears trickle down her cheeks and she wiped them away furiously. Upset at nothing? She did not know.

That was the problem mostly these days: she did not know.

Forehead against the window, she fell into a cocoon-like sleep, all sounds, sights and senses barred from her consciousness for a few, blessed hours.

If one looked in from the outside, one might have thought she was a statue, flesh as pale as the new snow now, sooty lashes laying in perfect curves on her skin, and the arch of her brows that suggested she feared to believe in anything.

Of course, no one was looking in from outside the window.

But someone was waiting from outside the door.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

He stood outside her room, ear against the door, cheek too. It had been hours, and she hadn't emerged.

"X," he muttered.

"What?" X asked, sounding thoroughly disinterested. Robin's gaze darkened as he turned to face his straight-faced friend,

"At least make pretense that you care about her," he all but growled. X merely waved a hand in dismissive circles. The two had simmered down something admirable during their five second dash to Raven's room and were back to being complacent with each other, maddeningly so almost.

But then again, as said once before, their relationship was, if nothing else, odd.

"She is being most difficult. Surely you do not deny it," X said simply, a cool bite to his words exuding his unexplained irritation with the girl and Robin shook his head.

"Perhaps, but," he began, tired of the old argument but unwilling to back down.

"But it is the truth and that is all," X cut him off and something hard snapped in Robin's eyes, a flicker of rage as he strode over to X and grabbed onto his collar. X, for once, showed a moment of shock, quick as he was to glaze over it with the languid and careless look he so often opted for.

"Do not forget X, that I am master here," Robin whispered, and his words slithered through the shadows like a deadly hiss. X eyed his master with an odd light of someone who knew more than he ought to.

"And yet," X whispered back: "You are a slave to it."

The master of the castle dropped X to the floor, turned on his heel and began to walk away, but paused next to Raven's door once again. A furtive glance was all he gave it this time though before he disappeared into the dark of the endless hall. X watched him go, an eerie light in his stare that refracted like explosions in the moonlight that filtered in through the tall corridor windows. It was rare for his master to show such...volatile emotions. Usually he hid them well, saved them for times of solitude. X understood this meant his master truly cared for the girl, which could be good...but mostly it was bad of course.

He rubbed his throat where the collar had been tugged up against the skin; it burned a little, but not so badly. X shook his head.

He wondered if he and his master were forever doomed to cat and mouse.

And he might have thought further on it, but for the creak of a recently inspected door. X shifted back into the shadow of the wall, melting away almost entirely, but still his eyes watched. A familiar head of heliotrope poked out of the door and amethyst eyes turned to stare right where he stood, and X held his breath. After a moment, Raven's gaze deviated however, and X went back to breathing—quietly, but normally. He followed her movement as she stepped fully out the door and clicked it softly shut behind her; watched as she glanced around as if she knew someone was watching and then, watched as she took off at a sudden dead run into the shadows ahead—just the way Robin had gone.

X stepped out from his own shadows. Who did she think she was, running off at an odd hour of the night after the master had waited all that time for her? Whether or not he liked her was not the question here. It was a matter of respect to the master of the castle, regardless of his personal gripe with the girl...and this?

This simply would not do.

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Roy Harper sat—or rather appeared sitting, as he really floated above or through it—on one of the gilded ledges in the corridor. One of his favorite places to take in the quiet, Roy often found he could not sleep and consequently, often found himself on this ledge, one of many that fell decoratively between each of the columns that backed the walls and separated each of the many hall windows. His feet dangled as did his legs over the side and he repressed a sigh at their transparent state. The closest to solid he could get was a mere illusion and even that would flicker with the wrong light.

Roy Harper missed being human.

But with this odd form in which the curse had laid itself upon him, came a new kind of ability. Not that it did him much good, for what use did he have for shooting light arrows? None to speak of that he could think. Still, Roy was a trusting sort of fellow, even where curses were involved and he trusted there was, at the very least, a reason for the way things happened to...well, happen.

So it was that Roy, or rather, Speedy, resigned himself in a much more cheerful fashion to the current situations than say, X or Robin himself even. Briefly, he wondered if Raven had figured the pair out yet and even as that very thought made its way into his head, he heard the soft padding of feet against the hall carpet and looked down as Raven hurried as if pursued through the darkness. Quirking a brow, Speedy faded into complete invisibility and though any onlooker could no longer see him, any onlooker could comfortably bet that the direction he set off in was the same as Raven's.

X sprinted through moments later, a little behind, but that'd never stopped him before.

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Raven wasn't sure why she was running. It just felt like the only way to move for some reason.

The stillness of the castle air seemed to mix with the eternal winter and the blackness of the hall draped about her like a shroud, but Raven was used to the dark. Even back home Garth had always teased her about ruining her eyes, what with reading in the dark so often when candles were scarce. This darkness was no different, she told herself and asked her heart to calm down, but it wouldn't listen.

She'd woken and immediately known Robin to be outside her door, suspected she'd heard X as well, but couldn't be sure. The only thing she'd been certain of aside from that, was that she did not want to have to face them together. For whatever reason, that unsettled her greatly and it struck her that her initial feeling on that was that meeting with the two of them simultaneously should not be possible; it simply felt wrong.

But here she was again, making little or no sense to herself and she realized dully that she had ceased running.

Then she heard, or rather, felt, a brush of a breeze and stiffened. But then dawning came to her and she let her guard ease a bit.

"Speedy?" she whispered. He materialized out of nothing, as usual.

"Where were you going?" he asked, not at all a whisper.

"I...I don't know. To see Arella, I suppose," Raven said quickly, not really meaning it.

"Oh, right," Speedy said and then, "But really, what's wrong?" Raven sighed. He wasn't going to turn the other cheek this time. _Just as well though, perhaps, I should talk to someone other than my horse,_ Raven mused dryly and shifted her weight a bit.

"I, I don't know. That was it really...I think I wanted to see Robin," she finished lamely, feeling distinctly displaced by her need to go on a feeling rather than a fact. It contradicted every inch of who she was before the castle came into her life.

"But didn't he go to you earlier?" Speedy asked, perplexed.

"He did, but so did—"

"X," Speedy finished with a half-smile. He rubbed the back of his head and Raven tried to ignore the fact that she could see the hand through the head. "Yes, they are rarely too far apart," Speedy said thoughtfully.

"He makes me uncomfortable. Robin is very polite and...patient. X is..."

"Not," Speedy summarized without meanness and Raven nodded.

"Well, yes," she agreed and Speedy shrugged with a shake of his head.

"It's in his nature," the redhead said as if that should explain everything. When Raven gave him her best blank stare, he added slowly, "A man can't be perfect you know."

"He's far from it," Raven replied testily and blew a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes.

"What is it I'm far from?" X did a ridiculously good imitation of Speedy materializing out of nothing, but since he blended in so well with the shadows, Raven made an allowance for this through gritted teeth. Normally she didn't tolerate people sneaking up like that.

But that was the thing of it here, wasn't it? Nothing here was normal.

"Far from whom I want to have to talk to right now," Raven said coolly and walked past Speedy who shrugged at X who arched a brow. Exactly what had he done to get under the 'Beauty's' skin?

Even he wasn't so sure.

X followed, waving for Speedy to stay behind. Not out of subservience, but more out of trust, Speedy obliged.

"Stop that," she whirled on X as he continued to follow her for much the length of the hall.

"What makes you think I'm following you? Maybe I just happen to be going the same way, maybe..." X trailed off thoughtfully.

"I know you don't like me," Raven bit out, "And that's fine, but why won't you just let me be?" she moved to speed her pace. X grasped her wrist without thinking.

"What makes you think I don't like you?" he whispered and Raven was reminded of how being too close to people made her severely uncomfortable...nervous even. She averted her eyes.

"Well, I—"

"I mean, you're perfectly right," X said curtly but even through her discomfort Raven noted how very much X sounded like a person trying to cover up the truth. She looked up sharply and after a moment's scrutiny, tried in vain to twist out of his hold.

"Then let me go, if I'm so contemptuous," Raven tore her wrist away from X's grip and stumbled back. "You're taunting me, aren't you?" she asked in an odd combination of sadness and annoyance.

"Robin is soft with you. He hasn't even told you why you're here, why he's always so nice to you, why he 'needs' you," X advanced on her. He was never a patient soul and all this waiting...it had driven him to an invisible edge.

"I don't know what you speak of...exactly. Yes, he has been kind but...he had no choice, bringing me here...he might have died," Raven tried to recount in her head as best she could the reasoning Robin had offered. But something was wrong with the words. They were becoming more and more muddled, cloudy like mist and had a smothering quality to them that snuffed out possibility for retrieval. "And there is the bond...He..."

"Raven..._Beauty_," X said, still a whisper, and Raven cringed at the return of the mocking nickname. "Don't you see what's right in front of you? You're an intelligent girl. I'll grant you that. So open your eyes," he said and forced her to meet his gaze, tilting her chin up between his fingers.

"They _are_ open," she whispered back.

"Then you are blind," X said and released her. Raven stood a moment, stupefied. What on earth was he going on about? She could not make heads or tails of it.

"If I am so blind, then why do you not help me see oh clairvoyant one?" she challenged to X's back. He stopped...turned.

"That I could," he said and his eyes were dark. "But I cannot. I have given all the hints, all the slight nuances I am allowed," he said and when Raven went to interject, he walked back over to place a hand on her mouth. "You must figure it out for yourself from here on, Raven. But one last thing, you may not like what you find as you are so clearly not fond of me," he said this last bit with a weary smirk, the kind that was used to hide some other emotion.

"It is only because you seem to despise me so unreasonably, and treat me like a child," she defended and X laughed hollowly.

"You are a child," he replied.

"You know nothing," Raven glowered.

"And yet I know more than you," he returned. Raven opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again and closed it, and after feeling thoroughly like a fish for a bit too long, began to simply walk away. "I know you think Robin is such a kind man," X called after her and she stopped short in her tracks.

"And are you telling me I think incorrectly?" she asked without turning to meet a gaze she had no desire to register. X took a few silent steps toward her.

"I am," he said.

"I thought you were done giving hints," Raven said tightly, not realizing her hands were enfolded in handfuls of her skirts, wringing them nervously.

"I thought of a loophole for the magic. Nothing is black and white," X said lazily and Raven was very aware of him standing now directly behind her. "It might behoove you to do the same," he said, leaning in near her ear.

What is happening? Why is he...? What is he...? He's only trying to confuse me, but... Raven's mind went askew as she felt her body flush in spite of herself at X's nearness.

"Where is this coming from, X? I could swear on the graves of my father and mother not a day ago that you wanted nothing to do with me that involved coming within twenty yards, much less...several inches," she said quietly, doing her best to cover up her confusion but still elicit an answer. X chuckled and she felt his breath on her nape.

"You don't understand much about the curse do you? It doesn't just change the affected...it _makes_ them, some of them become other things, yes, but others...others _become_ completely different people," he said. His face was so close to her own, leaning over her shoulder...Raven felt her heart picking up pace as she had the odd impression of his eyes burning into her soul and his fingers on her wrists felt hot suddenly. She wanted to know what was happening to her, why X was behaving so...strangely, what the curse was...when she could go home...why she felt the way she felt with his closeness...why Robin seemed so very far away... X's voice interrupted her wishful thinking however, "_Robin_ is soft with you," he whispered again. "But not me," he finished this time and without warning spun her around, pressing his lips down hard on hers.

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Eek, I know, to some it may seem sudden like 'what the hell was that?' But it will make sense. I ask you to stay with me. :) 

Review if you've got a sec please! You know I appreciate them. In fact, I don't know if this is a bad thing to say, but often a review will make my day.

Hope to have new chapters of other stories soon-ish and a one-shot in response to alena-chan's challenge.

-Rei


	11. XI : Mistake

Dedicated to: The Writer you Fools, alena-chan, Cherry Jade, and everyone who reviewed my most recent chapter of '_Hush_'...that was completely unexpected and I'm beyond-words grateful for your awesome support. You help me ignore the petty flames! Special thank you to **realfanficts **for your amazing, open-minded, and extremely kind pm. It made me feel a lot better after reading that one review/comment/whatever it was.

Now, on to the mediocre chapter 11, with the promise of a _MUCH _better chapter 12 in the works as we speak, I promise!

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**Glass**

**Chapter XI: Mistake**

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It was a strange sensation, his mouth upon hers, but not unpleasant.

Not at all.

The way their lips met seemed almost ritualistic as he was not as harsh with her as his words had suggested he might. Rather, they were firm, demanding, sensual and...starved...that was the word. Starved...for what? Her mind reeled as Raven felt herself pushed against one of the majestic hall's columns, cold marble pressing into her back as the one known as X accosted her in a most unexpected way.

But something was wrong.

Something began to ache in her and as the ache became more and more present, less and less ignorable, Raven felt it in her heart—a rend was happening, a slow, small tear down the center. The smoothness of X's hand caressing her jaw began to elicit a peculiar burn along with the shudder of something Raven wasn't certain she wanted to understand and his kiss emitted the same threatening heat.

Something was wrong.

And she could not place just what, but it felt like part of her was being stolen, part of her was being erased to nothingness, like part of her was dying in the fiery moment, reduced to ash and then stale air.

"Stop," her voice was a whisper as she forced her eyes open. They felt so very heavy.

"You don't want me to stop," X said, but Raven would not be caught this time, true as his statement may have been...partially. She shook her head and pressed her hands against his chest: away. He simply lowered his face directly in front of hers once more, stared into her, past her, through her. Reaching out one hand, he trailed it gently, amorously even, through her hair. Raven shut her eyes and turned away.

"Don't do that," she said, voice firmer this time. This was not right…something was off.

"Raven," he whispered, and the timbre of his voice expressed all the human desire and need that could possibly be conveyed by simply saying her name as he leaned in to disobey her request.

Suddenly a hot, white light, an inhuman heat of blinding saturation burst around the heliotrope haired beauty and X found himself unceremoniously thrown against the opposite wall. He slid down and for a moment, lay there, unmoving.

Raven didn't know exactly what had happened. A flush had come over her...no...a rush. That was it, a rush, a sending of and purging of emotion and a distinct image in her mind for distance...and then she'd somehow conjured a half-spherical shield of black and white light. She didn't know exactly what had happened.

But X's body on the other side of the hall gave her a decent idea.

Tentative from both her show of power and the result, Raven crept catlike over to the prone body of X, hoping somewhere in her heart she had not hurt him too badly. She knelt at his side, leaning over him.

"What am I becoming?" she whispered, frightened of herself even as she moved to disentangle X's various limbs from each other. What was left of her sense of humor voiced somewhere in her mind that she'd have to learn to control that someday...whatever 'that' was.

Right.

Relaxing with each passing second, she found herself rolling her eyes at nothing in particular as she sat next to the motionless body of one of the most perplexing creatures she had ever had the pleasure or displeasure of meeting. Granted, she wasn't certain he was even human, but was _creature_ going too far? She let her eyes examine his silent form as one might scrutinize a piece of art—thoroughly, carefully, and thoughtfully, all of which could be mistaken for one another if one wasn't aware of their finer than fine distinctions.

For better or for worse, it was one of the distinctions someone like Raven would always notice.

"What happened?" a voice came and she jumped. Roy floated near her shoulder, materializing from invisibility in trademark glows, eyeing the motionless X with curiosity more than concern.

Now, it certainly wasn't that she hadn't yet become accustomed to images being semi-transparent, people walking on air and fires becoming servants and wicked enchantments.

But sometimes even the things one got used to could startle one, and engrossed in her examination, she'd found herself alone in the world with the unconscious body beside her. It was somewhat of a shock to be reminded that there were other souls in the vicinity.

"Well," she began.

There was a pause in which Roy pretended to take seat beside her, really floating a few careless inches above the velvet carpet. In this pause, Raven took personal care to remove her hand from X's face, where it had been framing it in a way that could have been perceived as caring...affectionate...loving even.

This, Roy saw but only turned his focus on Raven instead, rather than her action. Her discomfort was wildly obvious, sitting like an animal caught in a trap, lost in the dark...lost in the wood. She turned her face away, hair falling like a curtain of violet.

"He's going to be sour," Roy said with gentle humor, typical lilt softened by a desire to comfort she who could not be comforted.

"No change then," Raven replied softly and began to fiddle with the edges of her cloak. It was a deep blue, almost indigo and the folds had shadows that made her seem almost one with the darkness when she wore the hood up as well. Hood down now, she felt entirely exposed and as see-through as her patient friend.

"What happened?" Roy asked again and at Raven's cringe, he added, "I'm just curious."

"I lost control of my..." she trailed off shortly. What did one call it? It felt less like magic, more like power, but it was magic, wasn't it? But she hadn't even had to say those words. A shudder ran through her, the same as that which a cold and sharp wind might induce. If she had used those words...azarath, metrion...those strange words...azarath, metrion, zinth—she cut herself off mentally—...if she had used those words...it would have been so much worse...she might have...he might have...

Her thoughts fell apart and she pulled her knees to her chest, burying her face in her arms. Roy though to comfort her but it seemed nothing could be kept quiet in the castle.

"What happened?" It was, if anything, the question of the hour. Raven froze, opting for stock-stillness and shutting down her quaking heart.

It was him.

"What happened to him?" He sounded worried. She felt the brush of his cape against her leg as he knelt to examine X. "X?" No answer. She felt him shift beside her—checking for X's heartbeat, certainly. She felt him turn...to her.

Him...Robin, master of the castle and all surrounding it.

His expression must have said a thousand things but her eyes were closed and face still buried in her arms as some alarming things began happening with her pulse.

"Master, it was a mistake," Roy said and she sensed him hovering between her and the castle's keeper. She'd never heard Roy sound quite so worried.

And Raven intuited, unhappily, that this was the darkest fear.

"Look at me."

She did not look.

"Look at me!"

She could not look.

"Have some courage after what you have done!"

And something snapped.

"Dare to say that I have no courage?" She stood abruptly, her cloak billowing out behind her with movement and her increasing aura of white and black. A white heat flooded her eyes. "After what _I've_ done? _You_ have done no less than I! And my actions were accidental, unlike some!" Her monotone had taken on a deeper quality, a darker one if voices could have shades but she felt no fear from her captor. Contrarily, his eyes did not glow but they burned the brightest blue Raven had ever seen, like marbles of blue diamond, swirling with white clouds. His mouth set itself firm in something crossing stoic and livid.

"You have no idea what you could have done!" he yelled above the roar that Raven was vaguely beginning to understand, was coming from the swirling magic around her—now glowing white, black, and violet.

"Maybe, if you would tell me something! Anything!" she yelled back, competing for leverage as she realized she was looking down at Robin. Funny, how even in her anger, she could see he was beautiful, her magic making his ebony hair blow back, his own power making him seem to emanate his own sorcery aura. And she could, in her anger, see and understand his own, even if she was still very much uncertain of what he inferred—not so much because she could not figure it out, for Raven was smart, but more so because it seemed too hardily unbelievable.

Impossible, even.

"There are rules that must be followed! You cannot just go around doing and reacting as you please! No one may do that! It is not allowed!" he yelled and Raven felt the heat in her eyes run through her blood right down into her fingertips.

"You are!" she retorted, hands encircled with glows that might have been white stars.

"Raven!" Roy tried to get her attention. He had a bad feeling about this. But she did not hear him and the intangible man realized that neither his master nor his new friend even knew he was there, not as a personal affront to him...more because of a strange connection.

This castle, it seemed, was full of those.

"I am not!" Robin shouted and leapt higher than any normal human should have been able to, and tackled her to the ground. Enraged to find herself underneath him and even more so to realize her own hesitancy to blast him harder into the wall than X, Raven struggled. But physically, truth was on Robin's side as his strength began to prevail.

"You are master of the castle!" Raven replied hotly, voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm that had her on the list of do-not-invite-these-people for social gatherings back in town. Robin leaned in until his nose was nearly touching Raven's and she found herself thinking this was far too close in timely proximity to a similar encounter with his servant.

And well, he'd seen what had befallen him.

"I am its slave," he whispered and his breath, feathery and heated lingered against her face as she thought he might complete the nearness with a kiss. But he pulled back, standing, and dusting himself off like someone far more stately than she would ever have expected him to act.

"That tells me nothing," she said, glowing gone and magic dormant again as she readjusted her cloak. The moment was decidedly awkward, leaving her feeling like she'd fallen a long way without ever hitting the ground. Robin did not answer but knelt at X's side again and shook his head. His eyes were cloudy, storming with something not quite fear and not quite anger, a fair mix.

"Speedy," Robin said, tone colder than anything, save the glass garden that had brought Raven here to start. Roy appeared at his shoulder with some misgiving.

"Master?"

"Take her to her room and make certain she stays there." And with that Robin lifted X into his arms and disappeared into nothing. Raven stared at where he once was.

How _dare_ he seek to confine her further, she thought overtop of the notion that she had really had no actual idea of his true power.

It took a vastly gifted sorcerer to be able to simply vanish to another place—no smoke, no light, just shadows.

Raven barely refrained from a sigh.

She longed for a dark place, far from there, just to be with herself. It was a cold longing, a strange pulling sensation at the edges of her heart. But a warm smile soon took concern and contradicted the cold.

Roy knelt in front of the still awakening sorceress.

Her eyes rose to meet his.

"No shackles?" she said before she could think. Roy did nothing to hide his surprise at her ability to make light of this increasingly discomfited and enigmatic situation and Raven found she felt equally as surprised with herself.

"Not necessary," he said gently but his eyes seemed distant.

"Did I do something that horrible?" she whispered, not wanting to be the cause of the confusion she saw in he who could be her only friend remaining. Her eyes implored an honest answer if nothing else but Roy did not have to think about it too hard. His answers came easily for Raven, for whatever reason.

"You could not have realized," was his answer and Raven nodded a little dully, hands clenching the corners of her cloak into wretched twists. Her current company arched a brow and opened his mouth to say one thing, only to close it again, deciding to say something else.

"Come on then," he said and gestured for her to follow. Raven tucked some messy strands of hair behind her ear, only half noticing how they fell right back into place as soon as she stood up.

"Why was he so angry?" she asked, padding almost silently behind the calm and spectral Speedy. She could just barely detect a shrug.

"The master is powerful, but X has always been his weakest flank," Roy replied smoothly—so smoothly that Raven received the rather distinct impression he was edging around her question.

"Then why does he keep him here? X does not appear so ill-cursed as you, nor as Hotspot," Raven said after a moment, trying not to sound too eager. She'd learned at some point in her stay here that the key to garnering more from her situation was to not seem to zealous for the demystification of it all.

Which of course, she was.

But Raven wore her masks well and her tone betrayed none of this.

"X is as cursed as I am, perhaps worse," Roy said as they turned down the corridor with Raven's room at the end. Raven increased her pace a fraction to walk along side the floating man.

"How so?" This was her most direct question yet and she found to her own wry amusement that she did not truly expect her friend to give her a direct answer.

"He is both the master's weakest flank and his most important one."

It wasn't exactly direct, and Raven's mind tangoed with the concept, placing X and Robin in their respective places in the dance...as to what it all might mean. For Roy had told her more than she'd ever been told before, something made clear by the pensive silence that followed his reply, if not by the words themselves.

Silence was an incomparable indicator of something's significance.

"Oh," was all she managed as she opened the door to her room. Standing on the threshold, she offered the tiniest of smiles to Roy who gave her one in return, though his was, by nature, much brighter. "Thank you for your help," she said after a few seconds of silence. Absently she began to fiddle with the edges of her cloak again. Roy simply shook his head with a soft smile and turned to leave, but as though remembering something important, whirled back around, eliciting a surprised exclamation from Raven.

"Sorry, but I just wanted to say..." he trailed off. Raven arched a brow and crossed her arms.

"Say...?" she prompted, but not unkindly.

"I know he seems a little strange, Robin that is. He tries to be kind, but sometimes it is not so easy..." Speedy frowned, as if struggling with his words. Raven waved dismissively with her hand.

"He's kind and sympathetic with me and then he's distant and elusive, and then he's wildly enraged over a person I can't seem to find one likable thing about when it was a mistake in the first place! A mistake! He makes no sense...It's like he's two completely different people," she scowled.

A moment passed as Speedy stood with his mouth agape.

"What?" Raven approached her friend. "Speedy?"

"Ah...nothing, that is...you'll figure it out. In the meantime, just try and keep an open mind about Robin, is all I ask, would you do that Raven?" he asked and Raven had the distinct impression of being asked two questions inside of one. She shook her head almost hopelessly.

"I don't see that I have any other option," she said simply and Speedy nodded a little dully.

"Yes, I feared you might see it that way," he sighed and turned to leave, pausing at the door, hand on the knob. "But you know, Raven..."

She stared at his back, rather than through it.

"What?"

"We all have two sides, you know."

And he slipped out the door, closing it with a metallic click behind him. Raven's confusion increased as she sat in a small huff on the edge of the bed.

"I don't suppose he's going to explain that one, is he?" she asked the air and let herself fall back onto the soft blankets of her bed. They felt cool and smooth against her neck and she closed her eyes, at ease. Well, if all people planned to do was to drop hints, then she would have to find her own answers, it seemed.

She'd waited long enough, trying to do it the way the castle seemed to advise...living as the majestic structure seemed.

But now she was done. Raven curled on her side.

She wanted to go home.

_And I will,_ she thought furiously. _I'll break their godforsaken curse and I'll go home_.

_I'll never have to see him again._

...Robin.

Suddenly exhausted, Raven felt her breathing even as she slipped off into the dream world and no one was there to see the odd crimson glow that surrounded her body like a shell of fire. Slowly it faded into her skin in the shapes of the cuts she had received that day in the library...and slowly those faded into invisibility.

Home...

But was that really all she wanted?

Later that night, in her sleep Raven tossed and turned until she was twisted in the sheets and somewhere, in the subconscious of her mind something woke.

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Okay, sorry it's kind of short but I struggled like Hell through this chapter and had to end the chapter there since the next segment can't be cut in half and it's about thirteen pages long all on its own xX Anyways, that does mean the next part should be up way soon. Sooo thank you for reading this...if you're still reading this and hope it wasn't abominable.

Probably most of you have gotten the idea/ have the idea of what's going on with a big part of the curse now.

-Rei


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